[xyzzyz]

Yes, eating meat is essential to flourishing of overwhelming majority of humans. Most humans, as they become wealthier, increase their meat consumption. This is very consistent across the world. If you forced humans to stop eating meat, this would make billions of people very unhappy.

Benefits of burning fossil fuels are extremely obvious, so I shouldn’t even need to list these — for one thing, they make the discussion we have now possible in the first place. Many of current uses of fossil fuels can be replaced by other sources of energy, though at higher cost. Higher cost of energy necessarily means we get to spend less on other things, which entails less flourishing in aggregate.

[myshpa]

> If you forced humans to stop eating meat, this would make billions of people very unhappy.

Wealthy billions. The poor ones don't eat as much meat and dairy. And it's a good thing ... if they did, we would need not one, but 4-5 Earths to feed everyone.

Eating meat is a culture. A story we tell ourselves. It cost us all of megafauna, half of our forests, it threatens thousands of animal species with extinction, and it should go. It can't go for much longer if we want to have any future.

> Higher cost of energy

Costs are human construct. Money is just a record in someone's database. Goverments can make as much as they want. It means nothing.

> necessarily means we get to spend less on other things

We will learn what has value when we'll eat the system to the ground.

[xyzzyz]

> Wealthy billions. The poor ones don't eat as much meat and dairy. And it's a good thing ... if they did, we would need not one, but 4-5 Earths to feed everyone.

Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying: less energy consumption pretty much directly translates to less human flourishing. You seem to be arguing that this is a good thing (which I disagree with), but you keep supporting my claim with more evidence, so please, concede this.

> Costs are human construct. Money is just a record in someone's database. Goverments can make as much as they want. It means nothing.

This is not so. If that was the case, poor countries could become rich by their governments printing more money. Zimbabwe tried, they did get more money, but did not get any wealth.

The point here is that money represents something very real and significant, which a claim on value produced in the economy. If you just “change records in someone’s database”, you’ll only have more money chasing the same amount of goods, ie. inflation. If you, however, force people to use different, more expensive sources of energy, the impact is very real: less of stuff in total gets produced, and so the society gets to consume less in aggregate. This means less flourishing.

[myshpa]

> don't eat as much meat and dairy

> less energy consumption pretty much directly translates to less human flourishing

You're like the man who floats on the sea on the raft made from coconuts. The more he eats, the more he thinks he flourishes.

Sharks are meanwhile patiently circling around.

> Zimbabwe tried, they did get more money, but did not get any wealth

Not everybody has the guts and means to organize few coups & occupy some countries first, steal their oil and other natural resources, then build mega army and spread it around half a world.

But if they did, then it would work. It's a recipe that works everytime.

Inflation is irrelevant. I've studied economics ... it's hogwash.

[lowkey]

> Inflation is irrelevant. I've studied economics ... it's hogwash.

I call the above statement hogwash. Let’s take your proposal to the logical extreme. If inflation is hogwash, then why do we have to tax the citizens? Why not just print the money we need to run the government? Why do we have a national debt if we could just print the money we need to pay it off? We could try your proposal by I don’t think it would end well.

[myshpa]

Inability to imagine alternative ways of managing things is all too common, and too complex topic to be addressed in a single comment.

Instead I'll recommend works of David Graeber [0], mainly his treatise Debt and The Dawn. [1][2] I'll throw in his Bullshit Jobs, just because. [3]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Graeber

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt:_The_First_5000_Years

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dawn_of_Everything:_A_New_...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs