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usual suspect
 
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Elitist leftwing snob Karen Winter wrote:
> Many consumers are ignorant.


Are you suggesting that those who eat meat don't realize it comes from
dead animals?

> Vegetarians and vegans tend to be more aware,


Elitist snobbery, and you're wrong. Veg-ns like to pretend they're
better informed, but they only bury their big heads in the sands of
ignorance. Veg-ns are patently unaware that standard agricultural
practices result in harm and death of animals. They assume that they're
not causing deaths simply because they don't actually eat animals; they
also pass the buck when it comes to their own culpability in causing
harm to animals.

<...>
> products from factory-farmed or abused animals. People who
> routinely buy products from Wal-Mart, produced by slave-labor in
> China


This is an unconscionable lie, Karen. You have no evidence that Walmart
sells goods produced only by slave labor. Labor from prisoners at laogai
(Chinese communist re-education and work camps) comprises a tiny
fraction of Chinese labor -- most estimates suggest that 4-6 million
Chinese are in laogai out of a nation of over 1.3 billion citizens. At
the highest end of the estimated range, that's less than a half a
percent of the Chinese. That means *99.5%* of Chinese are NOT in laogai
forced-labor conditions; it's important to keep that in perspective in
assessing trade between our two countries.

There are remedies to the issue of slave labor, but ending trade with
China (or Walmart) isn't one of them. If the US believes certain goods
have been produced involuntarily, the US can and should forbid entry of
those goods. The US also can impose limited sanctions to deal with the
relatively small issue of slave labor (at least in relation to the
aggregate imports from China). It would be deleterious to all parties if
we threw the baby out with the bathwater and stopped trading with China.
Consider the following:

Sanctions would be legitimate in preventing the use of slave
labor. Goods made with slave labor should not be allowed into
the United States. However, it would not be legitimate for the
United States to ban all trade with a country if only a small
part of its exports were made with slave labor. Private traders
should have the right to trade as long they adhere to the
principles outlined in the preceding discussion. To ban all
trade or to use sanctions to ban many products not directly
connected with slave labor would harm many innocent traders and
consumers.
http://www.cato.org/pubs/journal/cj16n1-5.html

The US has kept pressure on the Chinese leadership about such human
rights issues as laogai, religious freedoms, etc. Trade allows for such
a dialogue. Reducing trade would lessen any leverage on those and other
(e.g., pollution) issues.

It's still disingenuous for you to raise the issue as you did since
laogai labor is a tiny drop in the bucket and we import ~$200 billion in
goods from China every year (which, too, is a drop in the bucket
considering our GDP is ~$12 trillion).

> or the barrio in Los Angeles,


Barrio labor isn't slave labor. Those employed in barrio sweatshops and
factories lack the education and skills for better paying jobs.

> and sold by badly-treated employees,


WTF does this mean? Some employees are ****ed off that their bosses
don't hand out holiday hams or turkeys and think that's a sign of
under-appreciation.

> will usually buy factory-farmed meat as well.


Consumers buy such meat because it fits their economical sensibilities.
Why the hell should they pay twice as much to not offend your demented
sensitivities when they accept that animals can and do die so they can eat?

> The issue of treatment of animals is closely tied in with similar
> issues of treatment of workers and the environment, as most vegans
> and vegetarians are aware.


These are non sequiturs. The only common thread that you can tie these
together with is your elitist leftwing authoritarianism. You think your
ways are preferable to allowing others to make free choices in free markets.