How do we compare strategies?
Is there a way to judge which activism strategies are most promising? The author proposes a list of questions, called metacriteria.
Questions for judging a strategy
- Does it go after the cause of the problem or just the symptoms?
- What's the risk of setbacks?
- Has it been tried before? With what results?
- How many animals could it benefit, and how much for each?
- Does it make future changes easier?
- What's the risk of negative effects?
- How do the costs and benefits compare?
- What's the chance of very small gains, or none at all?
- What's the expected net positive over time?
- Is the public likely to accept or reject it?
- Does it fit with or clash with other goals?
- Is it easy or hard to put into practice?
- Does it depend on other strategies working?
Challenges
The author admits there's still a lot to investigate:
- whether all these criteria should be used, or whether others are missing;
- whether everything can be combined into one overall result;
- whether all the criteria should have the same weight.
In short
- There are many useful questions for judging a strategy.
- They look at causes, risks, reach, costs, and acceptance.
- More research is still needed on how to combine these criteria.