Veganism as the Alignment Test for Longtermism

Longtermism asks us to imagine the vastness of the future—trillions of lives, billions of years—and to act today as though those lives matter. It is a stirring vision, but it rests on a fragile assumption: that humanity is capable of aligning on a mission, coordinating across cultures and centuries, and acting with compassion at scale.

Before we leap to the stars, we should ask whether we can pass the first test right in front of us: ending factory farming. Each year, tens of billions of animals are confined and killed in conditions so grim that many philosophers consider their lives net negative. If we cannot align to end this, an atrocity happening in plain sight, what confidence can we have that humanity will succeed in steering the far future somewhere positive?

What the Book Says
Essays on Longtermism acknowledges this point, though with the cool tone of population ethics. It notes that ending factory farming could sharply reduce the number of suffering animals, both now and in the future. Widespread adoption of vegan diets and clean meat are cited as viable interventions. The book also highlights a subtler point: animal agriculture entrenches attitudes that block moral circle expansion, making it harder for humanity to extend compassion to future beings.

This is important recognition. But in the book, veganism appears as one cause among many, a piece of the longtermist portfolio. I see it differently. Veganism is not just a priority; it is the proving ground for whether longtermism itself can work. Should we even waste our time talking about it?

The Prototype for Alignment
To beat favtory farming, we must demonstrate exactly the skills longtermism demands:

• Global cooperation, since animal agriculture is entrenched in every economy.
• Moral circle expansion, since the victims cannot advocate for themselves.
• Systemic change, since entire industries must be reimagined against their own inertia.

If we fail here—on a problem that is visible, solvable, and immediate—what hope do we have with challenges that are abstract, diffuse, and harder to prove, like AI alignment or biosecurity?  

A Moral Ratchet
Ending factory farming would do more than stop present suffering. It would lock humanity into a higher moral baseline. Once cruelty is gone from food systems, it is unlikely to return. Children raised in a vegan world may look back at cages and slaughterhouses the way we look back at slavery or witch trials: bewildered that anyone tolerated them.

That permanence makes veganism a ratchet: a one-way shift toward a more compassionate world. If we can entrench care for nonhuman animals, we make it more plausible that we will entrench care in other domains—toward digital minds, toward distant populations, toward the fragile ecosystems of future worlds.

A Rehearsal for the Future
Longtermism often struggles with abstraction. How do you rally people around probabilities that stretch into centuries? Veganism is concrete. It is a rehearsal for the coordination we will need later.

Factory farming is visible, measurable, and solvable. Solutions already exist: plant-based diets, cultivated meat, policy shifts. The resistance is cultural and political, not technical. That makes it a uniquely revealing test. Success here would show humanity can align on compassion when it matters. Failure would expose longtermism’s limits: a movement rich in thought experiments but unable to move the systems right in front of us.

What I’ve Seen
I know this not only from philosophy but from practice. I’ve run a vegan restaurant. I’ve written books about veganism. I’ve lived inside the attempt to shift culture. I’ve seen how hard it is to change people’s habits, how quickly rationalization sets in, and how breakthroughs happen when compassion is made joyful and concrete.

These lessons apply directly to longtermism. The future will not bend to elegant arguments alone. It will bend—or not—through the messy work of aligning emotional, cultural, and economic systems. Veganism is where that alignment is being tested now.

Conclusion
Longtermism’s promise is immense, but its credibility depends on alignment. Essays on Longtermism highlights animal welfare as one priority among many. I see it as the test of whether the project can succeed at all.

If we cannot end factory farming—an atrocity unfolding daily, with solutions already in hand—then our talk of safeguarding the far future risks sounding silly. If we succeed, we establish a precedent: humanity can align on compassion, coordinate across systems, and lock in progress that lasts.

We should question whether longtermism deserves our attention when we can’t even face the moral emergency happening right now. Before we fantasize about saving future civilizations, let’s prove we’re capable of one simple thing: agreeing that treating living beings like products is what’s destroying us.