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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 29, 2024

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The issue is that we can't have 10 billion peole living a western lifestyle on a finite planet. The amount of water, artificial fertilizers, pesticides and antibiotics required for 10 billion people eating meat twice a day is simply not feasible. I don't think anyone is really enthusiastic over bug meat, it is simply an adaption to over population. Personally I would go for fewer people living on less industrially produced meat.

The issue is that we can't have 10 billion peole living a western lifestyle on a finite planet.

Have you tried, like -- not doing that?

I have no idea how things will shake out in other parts of the world, but North America has no trouble sustaining tens of millions of ruminants indefinitely.

Apparently

we

can.

Food has been getting cheaper, we're growing more of it on less farmland since the 1990s, and malnutrition is declining rapidly. There's no reason to expect that all of the trends that have been occurring since the industrial revolution will suddenly reverse, especially since global birth rates (gross) peaked in 2016 and global TFR is about to fall below replacement (if it hasn't already).

While consuming far more diesel than ever, far more artificial fertilizers, degrading soil faster than ever and using enormous amounts of antibiotics. Modern agriculture isn't sustainable, it is built on using slowly replinishing resources at a high rate.

Good news! The price system has your back! As we continue using up all these finite resources, prices will rise, and people will naturally shift to alternatives out of their own self-interest. The bonus is that you don't even need to do anything. You don't need to say anything; you don't need to argue online for a position; you don't need to ban/subsidize anything; you don't need to organize any rallies or political movements. You can just be happy in your own personal knowledge that the future will give you your preferred reality and your own personal confidence that the prices of your selected set of finite resources will certainly rise in the future. You might even make some speculative wagers in futures markets that could make you a bundle of money with which you can extra enjoy the future world. After all, that's why prices of hydrocarbons just kept ramping up from the early 2000s and there was no technology change whatsoever that reversed that trend. One thing is for sure; we're absolutely not heading to a world where we get more value out of using less stuff (on an absolute scale, not marginal).