My favorite example of this comes from my ~10 years working at grocery stores before I made it into the tech industry. An older lady would come in and just clean us out of our cheap ground beef. This was at trader joe's, we sold 1 pound plastic wrapped cubes for $2.99. She would come in and buy ~20 every week. I finally asked her what she was doing with all this ground beef and she explained how it was for her two big dogs and laughed about how spoiled they were.

She was totally oblivious about her actions and their implications, completely content with her lifestyle, probably even felt good about how healthy her dogs were. Viewed through a different lens she is abhorrent, single-handedly undoing the work of 20 vegetarians all because her dogs are too good for regular dog food.

I don't want this to sound like an attack but what's the issue? Heaven forbid someone feeds their pets the food they're supposed to eat instead of some hyper-processed and unregulated sawdust pellets.

I'm not OP so my answer may differ from theirs, but beef is one of the most environmentally-expensive forms of protein to produce. I.e., https://www.ewg.org/meateatersguide/a-meat-eaters-guide-to-c... and http://css.umich.edu/factsheets/carbon-footprint-factsheet

Well if you assume that beef is bad and cheap beef is especially terrible for both the environment and the cattle themselves then it isn't a huge stretch to see why someone pouring 20X the amount a human would eat into 2 dogs every week could be viewed as immoral.

It's like more people driving hybrid/electric cars cause gas prices to go down, in response to this other people can now buy bigger gas guzzling cars. Economics rewards immoral behavior.

Economics only rewards immoral behavior if we let it. We should properly factor negative externalities into prices.

Governments spend a lot of money on agricultural subventions, especially on meat and milk production. So from the perspective how the taxpayer money is spent, these specific pets probably got more financial support than several poor families combined.

Of course, this is mostly a problem of the system being designed so that it is trivial to abuse it. But currently, the system is what it is, and the lady's behavior is what it is.

That’s a great question...

I am not an expert, but the dog food cookbook I have cooked from didn’t prescribe 100% meat, it had you combine meat, grains, vegetables, and oils (and eggs? I can’t remember).

And there are more sustainable meats than beef which are just as healthy for dogs.

Also using parts of the animal other than the prime cuts is good for an overall more sustainable plan. (And probably good for the health of the animal too)

I don't think its as clear cut as you make out.

There was a Friends episode years ago where Pheobe basically argued that acting selflessly was a selfish act because people only did it to feel better about themselves.

I usually buy humanely raised chicken these days (the more expensive of the two they have in my supermarket), and notice that it tastes better. So from that point of view being selfish in wanting the tastiest chicken is a better option than the other.

Negotiate a higher salary and you might move up a tax band, paying more in taxes, which is generally for the greater good. If you really want to do good in the world, being rich is going to be one of the easiest ways to manage it. Bill Gates will be my probably controversial evidence of that.

Maybe it's just a matter of perspective. Doing things to be selfless or altruistic has nothing to do with external validation, reward, or appreciation, in my experience of it. Appreciation and reward have little effect because people generally appreciate the wrong things so why care? (e.g. just look at the ridiculous low brow unenlightened worship in pop culture). Saying "I make a good amount of money" makes people get all excited and happy for you, but doesnt me feel much at all, actually dwelling on it makes me feel hollow. Contrast to "I might be leaving the world a little bit better than it was when I found it" and that fills me right up, and it's fine if people roll their eyes, don't get it, or don't care.

Fewer and fewer people value sharing and selflessness and teach it to their kids, and more and more are teaching that the world is a giant capitalist slugfest and you need to take what you can. When I was a kid my parents (like a lot of us) taught me to share and play fair and give others their turns. Not so much of this is in vogue anymore.

I'll never forget once taking my kid to the park before corona and observing this directly. A little kid (4 or 5 or so) was crying to his mom within earshot. He was upset that he got off the swingset and then some other kid got on it. This could have been a teachable moment, but instead the mom said something to the effect of "You have to stay on it and keep it for yourself! Next time you want to take a break, call me over and I'll sit on the swing until you're ready to play on it again."

This whole attitude is everywhere now. You see it in politics, you see it at work, you see it in the grocery store.

You have to find your own internal motivation. Ultimately, it does not matter who you are. Even if you think of yourself as a good person, it is not worth anything unless you let your actions define you. It is up to you to decide if you want to be that selfish person, with all the benefits you mention that come with that. Or you can decide to do what you know is right and really be the person you want to be. Think "do I really want to be the person that..." before you act.

bad examples

buy cheap meat => die a little quicker; buy sbux every day => waste tons of money (relative to home brewing)

and who would fault someone for being paid what they're worth?