Of the total area that is used by humans (Agriculture, Urban and Built-up Land),
- urban and built-up land is 1m km²,
- agriculture is 48m km²,
so agriculture is 48 of 49 millions km² used, that’s 98%. The remaining 2% are all streets and housing and other infrastructure together.
So you’re saying “if everyone went vegan/vegetarian…” And I have a lot of doubt about the practical viability of this plan. People have been eating animals longer than we’ve had money or governments… or fire. So I’m betting it would be a bit of a tough habit to break. Development of affordable lab-grown meat could go a long way - but my bet is that there will be subtle (or not so subtle) differences between lab grown and real meat for quite a while, and there would be an indefinite market (maybe luxury, maybe just middle class) for real meat for the forseeable future.
Hence, rather than relying on people to voluntarily reduce meat consumption (they won’t) or applying heavy-handed and clumsy tactics (banning meat, deciding who or what is worthy of meat and when), we simply apply a price signal and reasonable regulations. The animals live relatively happy lives in reasonable and sanitary conditions. Then one day they wander down a hallway and are popped in the forehead with a bolt, and that’s it. Then the levers of prices can be pulled to gradually push peoples choices in long-term pro-social directions - gradually reducing meat consumption over time in whatever way makes sense to them, while wild land increases and carbon emissions decrease.
It’s interesting that you think prices are voluntary.
If meat is too expensive for poor people to eat, then it’s the same as banning poor people from eating meat.
I don’t think I said that? But using price incentives allows people to make the choice between spending their money on the same amount of a now more expensive good, or to change their behavior somehow. Hence, a poor person who previously ate beef every day has a number of options such as eating beef only on certain days of the week, eating a smaller portion of beef each day, or eating a less expensive kind of meat.
If we recognize that meat production has negative externalities, then to reduce these externalities we need to reduce meat production, which will necessarily reduce meat consumption. Above you seemed to be implying that the ideal solution would be cessation of meat production entirely - which I have to point out, would also result in poor people being unable to eat meat. So, are you defending the right of the poor to eat meat, or do you want to take the meat off their plates?
Really I assume that what you are getting at is economic fairness, which is not something I bothered mentioning because it didn’t seem relevant to the point I was making. But anyway - pigouvian tax schemes are often paired with social benefits. The government uses the taxes raised to either facilitate the social change it wants to create (eg, using a carbon tax to fund transit improvements) or returns the funds to citizens directly as a dividend which offsets the cost of the increased price of goods (in this case, there would be a break even point somewhere around lower middle class where the dividend recieved would be greater than the increased price of meat).
Again, price “incentives” are just a ban for poor people. A poor person who can’t afford beef is banned from eating it. It’s basically illegal with extra steps, because they can’t afford to buy it and the only alternatives are illegal.
If we’re going to ban meat we should apply the ban equally and fairly, instead of just banning poor people.
What’s the argument for having equality of outcome? I don’t think I’ve ever encountered anyone in support of this before.
I covered this in my other replies, but there’s two elements at play.
The first is that unequal access to food will create resentment, as poor people are forced to cut back or seek alternatives while rich people are unaffected. Resentment leads to resistance, and before you know it you have food riots. People will fight back, and maybe violently, which leads to the second element: high food prices are one of the major causes for government collapse.
Messing with access to food is the best way to get people to revolt, but in the absence of a revolutionary movement they’re just going to listen to whichever charismatic leader blames the (((NWO globalist agenda))) for taking away meat and uses the nostalgia of “LOOK AT WHAT THEY TOOK FROM YOU” to whip people into a violent frenzy. If you take away their meat, they’ll eat you.
It has to be fair or it won’t be sustainable.
“Just because they’re poor doesn’t mean they shouldn’t get the option to contribute to the suffering caused by the meat industry” is the weirdest take I have ever seen on this subject. I’m not sure I disagree, just, I think your priorities may need some examination.
The exact opposite - just because they’re rich doesn’t mean they should get the privilege of eating meat.
If we’re going to ban meat for poor people then we have to ban it for rich people too.
No I know what you meant - but this just seems like a “have cake / eat cake” issue. For example: you may have noticed that there are far more poor people than there are rich people. If the goal is to minimize animal suffering and reduce the impact on the climate, banning poor people from eating meat would be a great way to do it.
I just don’t think there’s a feasible way to rapidly reduce meat consumption without creating an incidental luxury market, and being concerned about that is (to my mind) almost a parody of equality. Yes, the rich suck. But being forced to tailor a good solution to the incredibly pressing problem just to make sure the rich don’t get to exercise the incredibly vast, nearly all-encompassing privilege they already luxuriate in is an unreasonably large burden to attach to an already almost insurmountable task.
There are far more poor people than there are rich people, which is why food prices are common precursors to riots and coups. The idea isn’t feasible because the poor will notice when they are forced to eat beans and rice, while their masters get to have steak. Unfairness breeds resentment. If you want to destabilize society a good way to do it is to make food access even more unequal.
This is ignoring what they actually said, which is a great deal more nuanced than the perhaps overly reductive way you’re presenting it here. They very explicitly address setting these rates to reduce meat consumption in low income brackets, not prevent it entirely, presumably with the intention of adjusting those rates to see a steady reduction of meat’s share of the average diet without causing undue hardship as people transition to a plant based diet.
Again I do understand what you’re saying, I just think it’s a bit of an absurd thing to earnestly argue. Every solution does not need to address every issue in society - inequality can be addressed independently and the more pressing concern is reducing the harm done to both animals and the climate. Theirs is a good solution - it is not perhaps ideal, but it is more feasible than any other proposal I’ve yet seen.
(aside from all that, the argument that their plan might be the inciting incident that sparks a broad proletarian upheaval of society is a really poor argument if you’re trying to convince me we shouldn’t do this…)
A dividend that presumably pays out during tax returns at the end of the year (anything else would end up overly complicated) is a pipe dream for people living paycheck-to-paycheck, it’s still effectively a ban for people too poor to afford the price hikes. They can’t afford to pay a higher price now and then get a rebate later, they’re just going to be priced out of eating meat entirely.
It doesnt seem that complicated. The government gave people free money during covid just fine. Could be a monthly dividend
Do remember “paycheck-to-paycheck” is a reality for millions and millions of workers. It would need to be a weekly dividend, either directly added to everyone’s paychecks or direct deposit or just mailed directly. That didn’t happen during COVID, it’d be novel.
Then it has other problems: that pool of money is vulnerable to things like government shutdowns, every landlord would raise their rent by the exact amount that the meat rebate pays out, and every grocery store would raise the prices of meat alternatives since the demand would increase. You’d need price controls, rent controls, and fund the meat rebate in a way that couldn’t just be taken away.
I don’t hate it, but it’s more complicated than you’re giving credit. If the payout was weekly (and the other concerns were dealt with) it’d effectively be a way to pay people to not eat meat, rather than a way to ban poor people from eating meat. If you didn’t deal with those other problems, especially rent and prices, then it would still effectively be a ban on poor people eating meat because the only way they could afford their higher rents and higher prices is if they saved their meat rebate checks. Like I said, complicated.
I’ve only ever been paid monthly or bimonthly, ut whatever. This is a nuts and bolts issue, and doesnt impact the actual concept.
Don’t do that. No other country does that.
Fun fact - land value taxes are even better for prompting markets to build additional housing! I also have a whole spiel on urban land use reform, but that’s for another time.
Under reasonable market conditions, yes, there might be a brief price increase when the policy went into effect - especially if rollout were not handled appropriately. But the nice thing about markets is that high prices prompt more competition - if veggie burgers cost $0.15 to make and sell for $15 because there is a shortage, it won’t be long before competitors enter the market and flood it with cheaper alternatives.
Under reasonable market conditions. I’m aware that there is some reasonable suspicion of price collusion happeing between national grocery suppliers, and that should be dealt with. But it should be dealt with regardless of the policy I’m proposing.
Absolutely not. This would be taking a sound economic policy and then blowing up the economy with objectively bad economic policy. Markets only work when prices can change in response to market conditions. If you have a shortage of something like housing or veggie burgers which is distorting the market, you want to incentivize the creation of more of it (while identifying and elimiating - within reason - barriers to production). Price controls do the opposite, worsening shortages. You want high prices to bring more sellers to the market
I mean, this is true of everything, is it not?