Every activity and product has a cost and contributes to waste. If I enjoy that food and pay for the cost then whats the problem? Are we suggesting it's virtuous for its own sake to have a lower standard of living?
> If I enjoy that food and pay for the cost then whats the problem?
Very few activities have costs that can be paid in full by the participant.
In your example, the burden of transforming the land, the carbon footprint of producing the food + transporting it is shared in varying degrees by the community, yet the enjoyment goes only to the purchaser. The cost paid at the store does not offset these other costs.
A free market is wonderful and the best economic system we have, but I think it’s also worth considering the impact our purchases have on the community.
But you don't pay for the cost. Our continual struggle with environmental issues are substantially that (a) very meaningful externalities mean that costs are foisted onto others, either the public at large or specific unlucky communities and (b) industrial lobbyists get public policy to actively subsidize their behavior, so again, everyone pays to support destructive behavior.
In the case of meat production, apart from the direct agriculture subsidies, and the large carbon footprint, feedlots are a source of pollution that communities have to deal with, antibiotic resistance contributes to (costly) health risks for everyone, the Gulf of Mexico has that giant dead-zone, etc, etc.
... did you just call someone a communist for daring to disagree with you?
My problem is unnecessarily destructive practices which are causing giant and totally avoidable crises.
If we were running the same meat production system in a centrally planned economy under some "the proletariat deserves meat" party plan with the same concentrated waste from feedlots, reckless use of antibiotics, clearing of the Amazon for ranch land, feeding a large portion of crops like corn and soy to animals that we then slaughter, the resource allocation system would be different but the destruction would be the same, and my objections would be unchanged.
But the "I paid for it and I enjoy it so what's wrong" response seems in bad faith and will not die. Suppose I enjoy the aesthetic experience of seeing oil on ocean waves; it catches the light in such a unique way. On weekends, I buy a barrel of crude, head out in a boat and dump my barrel and just spend the day watching the sun glisten on struggling seabirds. I think most people would not accept the "I paid for the oil; what's the problem" response, because _obviously_ the problem is I'm wreaking unnecessary destruction, and while I owned the oil, I don't own the ocean, the sea-life etc. You might like meat, and you might exchange money for meat, but that doesn't mean you're paying for the problems that meat production is creating.
In the sense of consumers worrying about their goods creating pollution, yes thats a common concern. Many consumers choose to evaluate goods based on their environmental impact.
But animal meat is different from most consumer goods in the sense that it’s alive and conscious. There isn’t much comparison to other goods there.
Yeah - kind of like leaded gas and DDT, or BPA plastics, no one pays the costs when they are externalised to the environnement/population.
No one paid for the damages caused by DDT - YOU are paying for it by having a crippled biosphere.
If the costs were brought down to you, the meat in a burger would be 20-25$ easy - not thibking about steaks and the like. This would cripple the economy - but it's heavily subsidised
You can't pay the price. If the subsidies are stopped, the farmers have to sell their animals to slaughterhouses order of magnitude more, the slaughterhouses have to do the same with distributors, and those guys do the same to restaurants/grocery stores.
No restaurant/grocery store would buy meat at that price (edit: restaurants and grocery stores make 1-4% profits on their sales) this is a PERISHABLE good. It's way too much risk - and what consumer would buy that?
Not forgetting that everything else remains the same price - McDonalds makes money off of dollar meals - that's not gonna work if a quarter pounder is 20$+.
So no - it's not about budget. This is to explain that the "status quo" is heavily supported and is more akin to a sinking ship that is being propped up by subsidies.
A plant based diet is justified many ways by many individuals. To me, sentient animals are not food and have the right to freedom, so that's why I eat plants. Some are motivated by the environnement, some budget, some health benefits, some other reasons.
> So you agree that if I pay the cost it's not a problem? You just disagree about what that price is?
Not OC, but I don’t think that’s quite right.
When you create any good, like converting a tree into a piece of paper, you convert a natural state into a productive state. No amount of money can reverse this transformation. You can only attempt to offset the conversion. In this example people plant new trees to offset, but the forest remains altered. Then we argue about to what degree it’s been altered and if that’s better or worse.
So I think the debate is more like: Can we offset our consumption of A by doing B? Because B never equals A, some people will naturally always say no and advocate against consuming A in the first place. Others will debate the price/effectiveness of B.
I'm not sure your question has enough context. But yes, not allowing the most illogically angry people (defined by me as the lowest common denominator in this Context) to start wars (aka crime and violence) over their hurt feelings is most definitely a way to defend democracy.
The watch itself is already a phone substitute for many people and continuing to grow. Isn't wearing a small thing on the wrist better than a brick in your pocket?
Do you have any imagination about how form favors could advance or even be different?
Plenty of people prefer a brick in the pocket to a small thing on the wrist, even before you consider all the technical advantages of the brick — screen, input, battery life, etc. I don’t feel the brick in my pocket, while I feel the small thing on my wrist almost at all times, however comfortable the band is.
The watch prevents me from reading the internet. While still remaining connected to the world through SMS and calls and purpose-apps. The watch allows people to un-nerdify.
A nitpick, but: if you get equity with your comp package, then you are an "owner" as well. The distinction between you and the C-suite is that their equity package is much higher.
