Chris Zell wrote:
If we gave up meat or any other resource, the price of said commodity would indeed drop - temporarily. Once the farmers understood that their market had disappeared, they would liquidate their herds. After that, meat ( or whatever the dismissed commodity was ) would go up in price . . .
I doubt it. First of all, why would anyone have herds of animals when you can culture meat in an incubator at cost 10 or 100 lower? This would be like operating a slide-rule factory in 2009.
Cultured meat technology will not be exclusively owned by one company. Since there will be competition, it should lower the cost. The assertion that the price will go up after the new technology takes hold is like saying that after we stop making cheap slide rules and mechanical calculators, and computers take over, the cost of processing data is bound to go up. (People did make this assertion back in the early 1950s.)
and continue to exclude consumption by the poor and starving. Farmers are not evil - their work is unglamorous and difficult and they deserve to make a living.
If we can make meat in a gadget similar to a tofu machine then unfortunately farmers who raise livestock will have no jobs. That's the way technology works. Progress always creates winners and losers. People do not "deserve" to make a living operating mechanical calculators, or manufacturing buggy whips, or doing any of a thousand other jobs that no one needs or wants anymore.
We have no shortage of chicken wings and steak.
We had no shortage of slide rules back in 1965, or buggy whips in 1920. Shortages are not the issue. When people can buy meat that is tastier and more healthy at a fraction of the cost of meat from animals, everyone will do that. Obviously this goes for cold fusion as well. It will eliminate the market for oil, coal, wind turbines or any other conventional source of energy.
We have laboratory 'meat'. It's called "Quorn" at your local supermarket and while tasty, it costs more than meat. I've tried to interest people in it - no go.
People made oceangoing steamships in 1840 that cost much more to operate than sailing ships. They made automobiles in 1890 that were far more expensive than problematic than the horse and buggy. New technology always starts out being impractical and expensive.
As to Japan, beyond the tidy exterior, some horrifying inefficiences exist.
I am well aware of that!
Consumers are forced by taxes and fees to get rid of perfectly good cars every 3 - 4 years to support employment there.
I do not know anyone who does this. I happen to own a 20-year old car parked in Japan at the station in Obatake, with the keys under the front seat, in case you want to borrow it.
The idea of owning a 'classic' car is almost impossible.
Just about every Japanese professor and farmer I know drives what you might call "classic" car; i.e. a jalopy, sort of like my Geo Metro: 5-on the floor and 55 mph max with a tailwind. I don't know where you are getting your information but it is wrong.
Japan protects farmers and small shop owners from foreign competition.
That, they do. Not much anymore though, because I know lots of farmers who are out of business.
Restaurants can be breathtakingly expensive . . .
I have never paid more than $50. But I don't frequent expensive restaurants anywhere. Basically, if they don't have the silverware wrapped in paper napkins -- or in Japan, the chopsticks on the table in a dispenser -- I don't go there.
. . . their mortgages can be multigenerational . . .
Not anymore. That's not allowed, as far as I know.
. . . and their homes and apartments are often a rabbit-warren existence that Americans would not tolerate.
I wouldn't say that. Especially not outside of Tokyo or Osaka. You will grant, I have been in more Japanese houses than you have.
It's a very different culture.
That it is. More than people on either side realize. - Jed
