the latter. people even claim to want change, but then they go about doing the same old things every day. they want others to lower their quality of life or spend more.

Sure, because people have limited bandwidth for caring about things. I wish all livestock was raised humanely, and that the cost of meat accurately reflected that actual costs to society.

But I like to eat meat, and I have lots of other things in my life to worry about; doing something to improve this situation is nowhere near the list of things I will actually have the bandwidth to work on.

> they want others to lower their quality of life or spend more.

This is the other sucky part: while we should be paying the "real" cost of meat, I don't think it's fair to make meat only affordable to those who are fairly well-off. That sounds like something out of a dystopian speculative fiction novel.

That's because many people just don't have time to take action or inform themselves, because all they care about (and rightly so) is how to bring food on the table for their kids.

Of course, this is exactly what authoritarian governments want. People who are exhausted, just poor enough but not too poor to start a revolution. People who don't have the time to read (really read, not watch TikTok videos) about important issues.