alt Hacker NewsAgreed. The market should decide if beef consumption is viable. Ultimately energy is the basis all food production. Cheap and plentiful energy solves the food production and distribution problem, then its just matter of preferences.
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> The market should decide if beef consumption is viable
The market has decided, ant it decided that the well off are more important than the rest so they get what they want at everyone elses expense.
Maybe we should stop thinking market forces are in any way right or moral. At least saying 'I got mine, fuck you' would be honest.
> Agreed. The market should decide if beef consumption is viable.
Until The Market™, especially in the US, starts dealing with externalities (like climate change), it should not. Something like carbon pricing (per Greenspan and Volcker):
* https://clcouncil.org/economists-statement/
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economists%27_Statement_on_Car...
Even Mr. Free Market himself, Milton Friedman, thought a price on pollution was a good idea:
It’s hard for the market to decide on its own when the environmental damage of meat production is left as an unpriced externality and when government subsidies are handed out like candy.
I agree that we must stop subsidies for cattle farming.
Market also decided that the Irish could only eat potatoes.
"The market" doesn't work as long as costs to the environment can be externalized. If the cost of climate change and lost living space would be added to the cost of beef it might be fair. But it isn't. Methane released by cows, cutting down rain forests for feed, and all the transporting costs us all dearly. But it doesn't cost the manufacturers anything directly so beef can be cheap.