@xl Based on offers that were submitted, the system only accepted those that specified a valuation of at least $10K. It sold each 0.6 percent of certs for each $60. Your offer of $60 for 12 percent of certs wasn't a good offer for the system to take -- pricing them there would have raised only $500 total.

I'm guessing someone would sell you $60 at the $10K valuation if you want to offer that.

(The whole valuation concept doesnt make much sense to me with this proposal.)

Thank you so much for your support, Alexander Rose! @xl . I'm sorry that that happened. We'd be super grateful if you'd be interested in joining our mailing list to simply keep in touch with LIC! https://www.legalimpactforchickens.org/#contact And thank you for everything you do.

Thank you so much for your support, @Alyssa !!!!!

Thank you so much, Harris! We are so grateful to you and to Sage. Thank you for creating Sage. @vegavengers

Thank you so much, Lynn! And thank you for everything you do for animals!! Also, Sage is the BEST. @sagedopes

OMGGGG Sage, we are SO Grateful to have you. You are a Godsend. Thank you for dedicating your life to fighting for animals. @sagemax

Dear Guenael, Thank you so much for everything you've already done for LIC, and for this great question. I want to give you a really thoughtful answer, so please give me a moment to formulate one. Will respond ASAP. Thank you so much, @guenael !

Hi again, @guenael ! Thank you so much again for helping us, and for sparking us to think through this.

The total amount LIC is trying to raise is $90,000. This is to cover the costs for one year's worth of contract attorney assistance for all of the lawsuits LIC works on over the course of the year, including lawsuits in development and existing lawsuits. We hope to be working on approximately 5 lawsuits over the course of this year, including our Case Farms appeal (https://www.legalimpactforchickens.org/case-farms) and other suits. We estimate that our entire budget for 2024 will be about $806,000. That includes operations costs, paying our staff litigators, etc. The $90,000 for contract attorneys is about 11% of that. Therefore, if we receive $90,000 from Manifund, then the Manifund investors will deserve credit for 11% of LIC's work in 2024. Since we expect to work on about five lawsuits over the course of the year, Manifund investors could get credit for 11% of 5 lawsuits. 11% X 5 is about half.

Therefore, we estimate that, if we raise the whole $90,000 through Manifund, then Manifund investors, as a whole, can have credit for about half of one lawsuit that LIC works on in 2024.

As for which lawsuit Manifund investors should get credit for half of: If we're allowed to set the terms, we'd like to say that the Manifund investors would get credit for half of whichever LIC lawsuit is most successful! But if we're not allowed to set the rules like that, maybe it would make most logical sense to just say that Manifund investors get credit for 11% of each of the approximately five cases LIC works on in 2024.

WDYT? Does this answer make sense? Am I missing something?

This impact market stuff is all new to us!

Thank you for the thoughtful answer @Alene. There is no right way to think about this – the buyer of the certificate can use any heuristic they choose, but I wanted to get your thoughts in the event one reached out while looking to put a dollar value on a successful outcome. 11% @$500 is a per-lawsuit value of $4500, which sounds like an incredible deal (but maybe I'm thinking about this wrong?).

@Alene Is the amount of impact you intend to sell tied to the total amount you're valued at, so that if you're funded 10K at a valuation of 90K, you'll interpret this as selling 1/9 the impact of 90K instead of 1/9 the impact of 10K?

@NoaNabeshima Shoot, I am not sure. What do you think the right answer should be? And how do we know the amount we're valued at? Is that something we find out later?

Awwww @Jacy This is an amazing comment! Thank you so much for your support, and for buying at $500! I agree with you about the pros and cons, and I hope I can live up to your positive words in bullet point 3.

Thank you so much for your questions and advice, @saulmunn!

1. LIC doesn't have an official answer to how we'd compare the value of chickens to other nonhuman animals. But I can tell you my personal answer, as LIC's founder. My personal answer is that, as a utilitarian, I value beings based on their ability to suffer and to feel pleasure. And I just mentally treat all animals who can suffer (or feel pleasure) the same, since I don't trust anyone's attempt to calculate which animals are more or less sentient. I just kinda treat sentience as a binary in my mind, with the only grey area being that for some species, like perhaps certain insects, science might not yet be sure if they're sentient or not. But once science finds evidence indicating that an animal is probably sentient, in my mind, that animal matters equally to all other animals. So, for all the animals you listed (chickens, lambs, fish, and shrimp), I would count them all as equal in my mind, because I believe they are all sentient and I don't feel convinced that one is more sentient than the other. I realize perhaps that's not a very satisfying answer to you if you believe that sentience is non-binary. And I don't have any evidence to support my hypothesis that sentience IS binary—It just feels like the default assumption I should have until I learn there really are degrees of sentience. Once you assume all sentient animals are equally sentient, then focusing on chickens makes sense because (1) a huge number of them are killed for food (about 9 billion in the US each year—far more than the number of lambs), (2) they're kept in terrible conditions, and (3) our society and our courts may be at a place where they're ready to recognize the needs of chickens (sadly, I don't believe our courts are as ready to recognize the needs of fish nor shrimp, but I hope that our work for chickens helps speed the day when are courts are ready).

2. As for the work we're doing: LIC believes that litigating for animals is a necessary component to ever getting companies to treat animals better. Companies don't follow laws if the laws aren't enforced. That said, many other things are also necessary for improving animal welfare. That includes increasing public awareness of animal cruelty, increasing public belief in the importance of animal welfare, and the passage of good laws. Each of those other things help LIC's work, and I believe LIC's work can contribute to some of these. So it is hard for me to compare the value of LIC's work with the value of other ways of working for animal welfare because I believe they're all necessary and ideally should be used in tandem. Again, sorry for the dissatisfying answer.

3. LIC's donors are diverse. I would say they generally fall into these categories: (1) effective altruists, (2) animal protection advocates (Which themselves are a diverse group with various views), (3) lawyers concerned with enforcement of the law, and (4) people who have a strong personal connection to chickens (e.g. people who live with chickens).

   Thank you so much for your support, Saul!!

Please excuse typo. I meant "when OUR courts are ready."
@Alene

@Alene thanks for the responses! i really appreciate your taking the time to write back :)

1. gotcha. this still doesn't totally make sense to me — i feel confused why "work to help support chickens" is more cost-effective than "work to help {shrimp, catfish, salmon, etc}." to highlight:

   Once you assume all sentient animals are equally sentient, then focusing on chickens makes sense because (1) a huge number of them are killed for food (about 9 billion in the US each year—far more than the number of lambs), (2) they're kept in terrible conditions, and (3) our society and our courts may be at a place where they're ready to recognize the needs of chickens (sadly, I don't believe our courts are as ready to recognize the needs of fish nor shrimp, but I hope that our work for chickens helps speed the day when are courts are ready).

   i don't think this follows.

   1. agreed that more chickens are killed for food per year than lambs... but many more orders of magnitude of shrimp are killed per year than chicken.

   2. agreed.

   3. agreed, and i see this as the strongest case for the work that you're doing — in my view, the majority of the impact that you're likely to have comes from the tail chance of leading the charge on a new legal perspective on animals, rather than object-level improvements for the lives of chickens. i'd be quite interested to hear your takes here — i'm sure you're much more knowledgeable on this than i am!

   i think i model LIC's path to impact as "improve our legal structure's ability to handle animal welfare problems." does that make sense to you, or am i off in some way?

2. "it is hard for me to compare the value of LIC's work with the value of other ways of working for animal welfare because I believe they're all necessary and ideally should be used in tandem"

   soft disagree. i think i'd be quite interested to understand how the LIC's work compares with other potentially highly-impact charities in the animal welfare space, but i can understand why this might be difficult.

3. thanks for clarifying!

@saulmunn Hi Saul! Thank you for your engagement and for all your interest in LIC! Yes I agree many more shrimp are killed per year than chickens, and the shrimp are treated horribly. It's very concerning and I definitely would want to advocate for them if I could see a good route to do so through the legal system (since that's the route I'm equipped to take). Shrimp deserve to be treated better. As for the benefit to LIC's work, we do see the chance to improve the lives of billions of chickens as a huge benefit in and of itself.