What is your goal, and what are your methods to get there?

I wanted to show that your argument is stupid. That’s it, really.

Because I’ve never actually tried to convince you, or praise veganism, or do any of the things you’d like to argue against to begin with. You are arguing against an army of strawmen.

Claiming I’m the one who’s confused only makes you seem delusional. You seem desperate to stir the conversation into a direction where you’re getting praised for your diet choices, while I’m still amused about your original comment.

You’re standing on the proud achievement of a claim that is not only wrong, even if it was true, it wouldn’t work as an argument in your favor. Maybe on some intellectually detached level you are in fact aware how stupid of an argument that really is, so now you’re trying to change the topic to vegan goals and systematic issues and convincing people of your unsurpassable approach to a sustainable lifestyle.

I am not a hardliner by any means. And I’m not even talking down your eating habits. I’m talking down dumb arguments.

Sounds like there is still some room for improvement in terms of “eating as sustainably as they can” then.

I don’t subscribe to the vegan moral system, I find it often inconsistent and confused. Like here… What’s best for the bees? What’s best for the ecosystem? What’s best for the humans?

Do you mean the vegan moral system is confused, or are you confused? Because not many vegans are confused about those things, that much I can tell you.

Right now you’re voting with your wallet to increase an economic demand for the death of billions of innocent blades of grass. Not to mention dead animals - but we’re not talking about them, that would be silly.

Being sealed off wouldn’t have to mean having zero contact with the surrounding nature. I think we can coexist with predators while still using some land for agriculture - just not all of it.

That being said, it’s bold of you to assume someone conscious of the suffering of plants isn’t eating as sustainably as they can with the choices they have available

Oh so you are a vegan?

I am not vegan, but simply trying to understand how honey is bad, but as you say “unavoidable collateral damage of agriculture” or not.

Is bad as well, we simply have no good way of avoiding it.

Think about it this way: Beekeeping is bad, agriculture is bad. Can we avoid both? No. But can we avoid at least one of them? Easily so. So let’s do that - half a win is better than nothing.

There are many ways agriculture could be less harm, less pesticides, less monotone growing practices, more spread out growing. We do not have to accept these practices to not starve.

I agree, which is why many (if not all) vegans strive to support those more sustainable forms of agriculture. But economic constraints are a real thing for many people. Not everyone can always decide to buy the higher quality produce. If we can - good, let’s do that. While and if we can’t, same thing with the honey: Can we avoid all the problems at once? No, but at least we can do as best as reasonable possible, so let’s do that. That’s veganism for many people.

I don’t think honey collecting is worse than agriculture (even of direct plants for human consumption), so I don’t think vegans should discount honey.

Even if it’s just 1% worse than agriculture wouldn’t we reduce a bit of suffering by replacing it? And I mean it’s not even like we need honey for anything. We consume too much sugar anyway. Even if honey is exactly as harmful as sugar cane farming (which is debatable), by omitting it we would save not only agricultural resources but animal exploitation as well. Not consuming it is better than consuming it in terms of animal suffering. Since we don’t need to consume it, from a vegan perspective I think it’s understandable why that’s seen as preferable.

I assume that for many vegans the specifically exploitative element of farming honey does make a difference to the rather unavoidable collateral damage of agriculture in general (since if we don’t want to starve to death; each and everyone of us, vegan or not, will have to accept that those are happening) - but if you assume that honey comes with less suffering than corn syrup you’re very welcome to replace them accordingly. Based on your tone I assume you’re not a vegan and not actually interested in reducing animal suffering, but I could be wrong.

I think if you ask 10 people this questions you will get 11 opinions, at least.

I personally would prefer the reintroduction of predators into their native habitats because the human tendency to squeeze economic profit out of every square centimeter of the planet we inhabit reads absolutely bizarre to me. This kind of instrumental world view where everything has to have a purpose for us is in my opinion an epoch in the development of humans we should strive to leave behind, because although for a time it shaped our progression as a species like nothing else, it’s also about to destroy the world we live in and come crushing down on us if we find no better way forward. I believe that in the long term we will have to withdraw from at least some parts of the ecosystem and let the predators do their thing. Our population centers can be (and for a good part already are) so sealed off to them that it should very well be possible to do our thing without being mauled by wolves.

…All this does go a bit beyond the question of honey though. Sorry for the rant there.

In a perfect world I think this could be true. Small scale backyard beekeeping with native species, where I only take the surplus the bees themselves don’t use, where queens are left alone and drones are allowed to reproduce in their own pace. The problem is: That’s not how it’s done on the industrial scale at all. So even if you had such a bee utopia in your backyard and could replace all your sugary needs with that, as long as the well being of bees is of interest to you you’d probably still refrain from buying products that have honey in them. In a capitalist society companies will always use the cheaper stuff, and that comes almost exclusively with massive animal exploitation.

Every aspect of our globalised and industrialised world is causing harm. Veganism is about reducing the harm we’re responsible for as far as possible and reasonable. Renouncing honey is easy. So it’s possible and reasonable. No vegan thinks they’re responsible for zero suffering or even zero dead animals, we’re simply trying to reduce the number as best as we can without starving ourselves.

But renouncing honey is very easy, while not eating plants would mean starving to death. Since veganism is about reducing harm as far as possible, unavoidable suffering doesn’t make anything non vegan.

They are, which is why honey isn’t vegan, and you brought a very good argument for that yourself, namely that the industrial process behind it all tends to be quite brutal.

Then you should definitely go vegan. A vegan diet comes with the least amount of plant deaths and plant suffering, since lifestock is being fed with billions of individual plants before being slaughtered. You can save all of them.

One good argument for this: A vegan diet not only minimizes animal deaths but plant deaths as well, since livestock obviously has to be fed on many, many individual plants before they can get slaughtered. So even if we for some reason prioritized saving the lives of plants going vegan would still be the way to go.

Who is going to pull the trigger? Point to the opposition leader willing and able to try and dismantle a party with this many active supporters.

Read the article. It’s already happening.

Which are used to target unpopular fringe groups not regional majorities.

You don’t seem to know a lot about the German constitution. The opposite is true. Unppular fringe groups are not banned because they are not actually a danger to democracy, as long as government positions are not in reach for them. That’s exactly how the german federal constitutional court has argued in the past. Successful bans ever only targeted actually successful parties.

The core mechanism of democracy is to abolish political organizations wholesale?

The core mechanism of democracy is to protect itself, and first and foremost that means protecting itself from facism. A political organisation that’s threatening democracy should obviously not be allowed, so it will be banned.

They won’t, in no small part because the AfD has enough seats to block the attempt.

They cannot block a decision of the federal constitutional court, don’t be ridiculous. Germany has measures in place exactly for this scenario, and they are about to be enforced. They cannot be vetoed away, it’s a legal matter.

Can you ban a party that’s got a plurality of seats in the Parliament? Or will they be the ones banning you?

Of course. And it’s nonsensical to claim we cannot ban them, while worrying they could ban us. We can and we should, based on what you yourself wrote:

If you pass a law but never enforce it, the law does nothing.

We have laws against undemocratic parties, so we should enforce them.

I mean, by all means, feel free to give it a shot. But it seems like you’re asking an elected government to do a thing it isn’t designed to do.

But it is designed to do exactly that. That’s like a core mechanism of our democracy.

The only way to argue we shouldn’t ban the AFD is if you claim that they somehow should be exempt from our mechanisms against fascism. They were enforced before, they will be enforced again. And the AFD fits the bill in every way.

That rather speaks for banning the AfD though. We have a law for banning fascist parties, so we should enforce it, or it truly would mean nothing.

Some of us are convinced this measure does nothing

Nothing? How can it do nothing? You could argue that it doesn’t do enough or not the right things, but if nothing else banning the party would obviously keep them out of the government at least for the next few years.