See from my point of view, this is just about a fear of change. We already have laws against animal cruelty and excessive and/or unnecessary pollution. So why would it be overbearing to ban animal breeding? If we did this, your life would barely change. The only difference is you'd be healthier and your descendants would grow up in a cleaner environment.
The only reason banning the breeding of animals, thus creating forced veganism, sounds so scary is because it's a new idea.
Humans require protein. If you effectively banned all animal consumption, then you would need to devote a lot of effort to ensuring that humanity had a proper alternative source to protein. One of the more common alternatives is soy, but we've seen that phytoestrogens have a negative effect on humans. All plants have phytoestrogens, but only certain plants have high enough levels of them to harm humans hormonally. Soy is one of those plants. There are other plants that have high protein but do not have the phytoestrogen issue, like jackfruit. Jackfruit isn't currently a widely available plant, but I suppose that could change.
Even if said efforts were successful in making jackfruit the primary substitution of meat, there would still be the question of state interference. If you want to call fear of government overreach a "fear of change", then so be it, but I call it fear of authoritarianism -- something we already are somewhat experiencing. If we allow government to dictate how we eat, then where does it stop? Should we ban desserts next? They don't have any particular nutritional value. We could feasibly lower the incidence of diabetes by doing so. Should we ban fast food? That would presumably lower a lot of other health problems.
You can justify about any government action in a cost-benefit analysis, if you have no particular concern for personal freedom. If there are no principled bounds on what government should be allowed to do, there are numerous actions the government could take that would likely make us healthier and safer. Granted, it also depends on if you value freedom over health and safety. Personally, I do. I think freedom is one of the most important aspects of Western life. Without it, there's really not much reason to live in the West. I could think of several non-Western countries that are safer than America and most of Europe but have far less freedoms. Singapore is a good example. Japan is another.
To me, the point of living in a Western country is specifically about freedom. If we lose most of our freedoms in the pursuit of supposed safety and health, then there isn't much appeal to living here anymore.
If that doesn't convince you, consider this. Why are Conservatives, especially small town Conservatives, so scared of legalizing drugs and prostitution? This would decrease the size of government and we'd be letting adults do what they want with their own bodies. It's seem so obvious that these things should be legal in a free country. But it's not about government or freedom, it's about tradition and a fear of change.
On prostitution, I agree. Drugs are a bit different, however. Decriminalizing drugs makes sense. It's worked fairly well for Portugal, and it treats users as addicts, not criminals.
Legalizing drugs leads to a myriad of issues. The biggest issue with legalizing pot, for example, is that the current legal market for it still has connections to organized crime. Each state that has legalized it has different regulations, but there are ways that the supply chain can still involve criminal elements. And the cartels can use pot as a money laundering market for their other activities (like human trafficking). It's no different from how the mafia used alcohol as a money laundering market after the end of Prohibition.
The only way to really avoid this issue is to make all legal pot grown by the government or by a small group of corporations that don't have cartel connections. Under that structure, I suppose legalizing pot isn't a problem, but again, it requires proper regulation to maintain this.
In big cities, people are forced to learn tolerance, which conditions them to be ok with change. That's not to say we think all change is good, but we're not afraid of it. So we're able to examine issues logically instead of just saying everything should stay the same.
Tolerance of everything except for differing opinions, you mean. Big cities are very much afraid of change. Try reforming unions, for example. A lot of industries in big cities are slaves to unions. The oldest and biggest cities are the most locked into powerful oligarchies. Only people with the proper family and personal connections get the levers of power.
In short, the only "change" that big cities usually support involve giving government more power or pushing certain progressive social agendas.
