“Questions about animal welfare markets” by Austin

Last week, I joined “Revolutionist's Night” — a cabal aiming to radically improve animal welfare, with some flavor of 1800s slavery abolitionism or the 1700s American revolution. Our topic for the evening was inspired by Aaron Boddy's post “The current market price for animal welfare is zero”: can we create a market where anyone can directly buy credits for animal welfare? I’m very sympathetic to this idea, and similar ideas like Paul Christiano's for offsetting factory-farmed eggs. (A year ago, I spent some time brainstorming how one might actually implement the egg-offset-thing.) Some reasons I’d be excited: Markets are great at optimizing for particular objectives, if you shape them correctly. The world abounds in cheap high-quality consumer goods, thanks to markets. There are some precedents for using markets for public goods, from carbon credit markets and renewable offsets (eg electric vehicle or solar credits) Welfare credits let you [...] --- First published: July 21st, 2025 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/34BKchKuN4wvR84Cy/questions-about-animal-welfare-markets --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.