[choilive]

Agreed. 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.

[BadBadJellyBean]

"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.

[enoint]

We're more than 40 years past the first boycotts on rainforest beef. Not small boycotts, either; big ones which were effective at scale. If we translated the concerns here into Chinese, would it affect the current top importer of rainforest beef?

[brainwad]

Just slap a pigouvian tax on it.

[sirbutters]

And meat is heavily subsidized by the government. It's insanity and corruption.

[RhysU]

In the US agricultural subsidies for 2024 were overwhelmingly for corn ($3.2B), soybeans ($1.9B), cotton ($998M), and wheat ($960M). Pasture comes in 5th ($741M).

https://usafacts.org/articles/federal-farm-subsidies-what-da...

Tofu and ethanol may be more price-distorted by the US government than is beef, but I dunno how to quickly support that idea with hard data beyond what I cited above.

[stvltvs]

Depending on how we measure it, either 58% or 75% of that heavily subsidized soy goes to feed animals.

https://insideanimalag.org/share-of-soybean-crop-for-feed/

[datsci_est_2015]

Have you been to the Midwest to observe the scale of corn and soybean operations? I would wager the number of calories per dollar subsidy produced by the corn and soybean industries outweighs handily the calories per dollar subsidy produced by cattle operations, especially given the 10% reduction in efficiency per trophic level.

Also, how much does beef benefit from cheap feed prices (corn and soy) due to subsidies as well?

[RhysU]

Beef prices are high right now.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/APU0000703112

If the intent of the government is to pour subsidies into domestic beef production to stabilize prices they're doing a crap job.

Compare corn: https://www.macrotrends.net/2532/corn-prices-historical-char...

[mhurron]

> 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.

[b65e8bee43c2ed0]

those 33 calories are dirt cheap carbs. there's absolutely no shortage of soy and corn syrup for you to consume.

[r_p4rk]

Soy is an excellent protein source?

[b65e8bee43c2ed0]

1. "protein" is a blanket term for a number of amino acids we need, and vegetable sources tend to miss a bunch of them.

2. atrocious calorie to protein ratio due to carbs. I imagine eating a pound (dry weight!) of any legume every day would get real old real fast.

3. phytoestrogens. not just soy, all legumes are full of them, even peanuts.

[r_p4rk]

1. yeah, i know, soy is packed full of them though and considered a complete protein hence my reply :)

2. i imagine eating a pound of most unprocessed food sources would be bad, tofu and tempeh are very competitive and have macros similar to egg or cheese

3. not sure where you're going with this? surely you're not referencing the well debunked claim that soy feminizes men or something?

---

I'm not even vegan and I make plenty of room for soy derived foods in my diet because the benefits are so concrete. It helps with muscle recovery and inflammation via soy isoflavones, and the gut health benefit from diversifying protein sources is very important. It has marginally less leucine, but I am ingesting 200g of protein a day because I actually lift so that really doesn't matter.

[b65e8bee43c2ed0]

>3. not sure where you're going with this? surely you're not referencing the well debunked claim that soy feminizes men or something?

pray tell, which part is deboonked - that xenohormones disrupt our own hormone production, or that legumes and some other plants contain a lot of phytoestrogens?

[rayiner]

This is stupid thinking indulged in by westerners who were born in the lap of luxury. The market is incredibly moral. When my dad was born in a village in Bangladesh, 1 out of 4 kids didn’t live past age 5. Thanks to market reforms and the resulting economic growth, child mortality in Bangladesh has plummeted. Bangladesh’s under-5 morality rate is better today than America’s was at the same time my dad was born.

If India and Bangladesh hadn’t fucked around with socialism for decades after independence, we could have reached the same point many years ago. Millions of children would have been saved. Talk about immorality.

[worik]

Bangladesh has done well, in difficult circumstances

Market reforms helped. But those reforms could not have happened unless the state did sensible things

Those same market reforms impoverished the entire middle class in New Zealand, where the state did not do sensible things (the reverse)

Markets are good at fully allocating resources, which feudalism and central planning is not. But they also concentrate wealth into the hands of very few (that is what wrecked New Zealand's middle class) and it takes deliberate government policy to avert that.

[rayiner]

> Market reforms helped. But those reforms could not have happened unless the state did sensible things

The state did almost nothing sensible! Bangladesh’s government, and the culture of the people more generally, is one of the most dysfunctional in the whole world. We just overthrew our government again! The free market is just a hardy plant growing in inhospitable ground as long as you don’t completely strangle it.

[oa335]

> Thanks to market reforms and the resulting economic growth, child mortality in Bangladesh has plummeted.

I agree that market reforms have been great for most countries that adopt it, provided they have stable and competent institutions.

However, it doesn't make sense to attribute decrease in child mortality to "market reforms". Cuba, Russia/USSR, North Korea all have seen huge declines in child mortality since 1960.

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.IMRT.IN?end=2006...

[selimthegrim]

Why don't you ask noted anti-socialism state Pakistan (pre and post-1971) how that's going?

[rayiner]

We have A/B comparisons in India and Bangladesh keeping the underlying culture constant. Pakistan’s problem seems to be a Pakistan thing.

[danaris]

So..."Pakistan's problem is a Pakistan thing", unrelated to markets....

...but Bangladesh's success is purely attributable to markets? It's not "a Bangladesh thing"?

You might want to check your prejudices there.

[rayiner]

There’s a Civilization-game style “tech tree” for cultural and social development. Some societies are further along in that development than others.

Pakistan faces the same cultural problem as Afghanistan and parts of the middle east: in large parts of the country, extended kinship groups dominate society, precluding the development of civic institutions and functioning government. That’s not true for the whole country. Parts of Pakistan are culturally like India or Bangladesh: it has a long history of governance by central institutions, even if that governance is dysfunctional. Imagine if 50% of the U.S. population was Appalachians. The U.S. would be a much less successful country also.

[mhurron]

You mean the Socialism that produces higher quality of life in Scandinavia as compared to to say the US where the oh so moral market decides if you weren't born into the upper end of society you deserve to die of disease and conditions that can be treated?

The market is not moral, it is amoral and it serves those with the money to direct it.

[JuniperMesos]

I know a number of people who have immigrated from Scandinavian countries to the US, generally for high-prestige or high-paying work. If quality of life in Scandinavia was consistently higher than in the US, they wouldn't be doing this.

[foldr]

People also immigrate in the other direction. And more generally, it obviously happens sometimes that people move from one country to another with a lower average quality of life.

[TimorousBestie]

How are you extrapolating overall quality of life from some anecdotes of high-prestige or high-income workers? Seems like a fallacy of composition slipped in somewhere.

[kshahkshah]

My understanding is that a large portion of Scandinavian socialism is paid for by sovereign wealth funds, ultimately backed in their oil production and reserves.

I know they’ve gotten a lot else right of course

[rayiner]

> You mean the Socialism that produces higher quality of life in Scandinavia as compared to to say the US where the oh so moral market decides if you weren't born into the upper end of society you deserve to die of disease and conditions that can be treated?

Scandinavian countries have highly market oriented economies. Denmark and Norway are in the top 10 in Heritage Foundation’s economic freedom index and Sweden is #11. Capitalism is what generates the surplus to feed the socialists in Scandinavia.

[mhurron]

Every single one of those economies are highly regulated to prevent 'the free market' deciding peoples lives.

Without it, you get the US. You get the life your wealth dictates, if you're not wealthy, you didn't deserve life.

Sweden's costs for insulin are over 10 times lower than that of the US, because the US let the free market decide and Sweden has a socialist political system.

At a place I lived earlier, my neighbour got out of the hospital after heart surgery with a $100k medical bill that they never recovered from. My dad had heart surgery in Canada and left the hospital with a $150 parking bill.

But no, please lets continue to try and argue the free market is moral and just.

[rayiner]

> than that of the US, because the US let the free market decide and Sweden has a socialist political system.

Sweden doesn’t achieve lower prices for insulin through “socialism” or regulation. In Sweden, middle class people tax themselves heavily to pay for insulin for poor people. It has nothing to do with free market versus socialism. It’s free-market capitalism with very high taxes on individuals and low taxes on capital and corporation.

> But no, please lets continue to try and argue the free market is moral and just.

It is just and moral. Before Sweden had the free market, it was poor as shit and one quarter of the population of Sweden came to America. Whatever socialism you think Sweden has now, it got only after becoming rich through capitalism.

[datsci_est_2015]

Amazing that advancements in Bangladeshi quality of life is due to only market forces! What an incredibly unique geopolitical phenomenon.

[rayiner]

It’s not unique at all! When my dad was a kid in the 1950s, Singapore, China, South Korea, and Taiwan were poor—all under $1,000 GDP per capita. They were a little ahead of Bangladesh but less than a factor of 2. The U.S. at the time was around $10,000.

Today, Taiwan, Singapore, and South Korea are rich, and China is getting there. Multiple dirt poor Asian countries getting rich within a few generations thanks to One Simple Trick!

[_aavaa_]

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.

[irishcoffee]

Pretty sure the western US states are in a water shortage because they grow almonds et. al. In places that were not meant to be agricultural, importing water, fucking up the entire ecosystem of the region and causing massive water shortages, and massive environmental damage.

But yeah, we can keep focusing on the farting cows, that’s the problem.

[_aavaa_]

Ask yourself why they are growing almonds there if it’s such a problem? Because those almond growers have water right contracts that are absurdly cheap and are use it or lose it.

Fine by me though, add in the environmental costs for almonds too. Would you support an initiative of pricing these externalities on food, or is it just a snarky comment about cow farts?

[irishcoffee]

So you're good with artificially fucking the water supply?

[_aavaa_]

Do you care about the water use from almonds or is it just a shallow hatch point to not have to talk about the damages from raising animals for food?

Is the water use from almonds a problem or is it fine and any changes would be “fucking the water supply”?

[bluedino]

I'd bet the people who don't eat beef eat a lot more almonds than those who do.

[throw0101a]

> 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:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YGfwSvLkC0

[Hikikomori]

Market also decided that the Irish could only eat potatoes.

[ux266478]

It was actually a disgusting set of edicts and regulations called the Penal Laws, enacted by the English crown, which formalized and wrote into law the informal restrictions imposed on Irish Catholics after the Tudor conquest, as part of a broader genocidal colonialization scheme. Very cool attempt to try and sweep that little fact under the rug. Fun fact, Adam Smith cites the penal laws as an example of the dangers wrought by mercantilism.

[Hikikomori]

Can be a bit of both? Free market advocates were certainly involved saying it should work itself out. It kinda did by letting millions die.

[bjustin]

I agree that we must stop subsidies for cattle farming.