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Re:How to lower the price of plant-based meat by YeGoblynQueenne on Saturday February 06, 2021 @03:57PM (#26049866)
>> Interestingly it doesn't even discuss the obvious solution: Let people who buy real meat pay for the externalities.

Are we going to have people paying for the "externalities" of all the products they consume?

For example, the people who buy a new phone every year or half (this habit causes a significant amount of pollution, so-called "e-waste"). The people who drive their car everywhere. The people who fly a few times a year. The people who use computers (more e-waste). The people who wear clothes made of synthetic fibers and use plastic-based implements. The people who burn wood, coal or oil for central heating. The people who use electricity (the major producer of greenhouse gas emissions is power production). The people who read books printed in paper produced by felled trees. The people who consume plant-based products whose production is responsible for deforestation, soil depletion, acidification of soil, etc etc. The people who eat fish. The people who eat soy (major contributor to the destruction of the Amazon rainforest). etc etc.

Are we only going to make meat eaters pay for their "externalities"?

Re:How to lower the price of plant-based meat by roughly on Saturday February 06, 2021 @05:38PM (#26050719)
> Are we going to have people paying for the "externalities" of all the products they consume?

Well, yes, we should. Considering that notion is baked into every part of the economic models we're using to determine how we're structuring the rest of the economy, absolutely, the bare minimum we could do is make people actually pay for the damage they're causing. I'd go so far as to say a substantial part of the reason we seem unable to reasonably address things like pollution, climate change, and biodiversity is because people aren't paying the full cost of their actions.

Re:How to lower the price of plant-based meat by jrochkind1 on Saturday February 06, 2021 @05:54PM (#26050872)
Ideally, yes, for sure.

One way or another, it's the only way we get a society that can live on the planet indefinitely without making it less and less fit for human habitation.

How you do that is not necessarily trivial, but we should start doing what we can figure out how to do now, yes. You don't have to do it for everything for it to be valuable to do it for what we can figure out how to do it for.

For meat, simply ending subsidies would be a good start.

Cell phones and other electronics as you point out are another obvious target, yes. Some have proposed that the cost of disposal/recycling should be built into the purchase price -- one practical way to do that, is require manufacturers to take back the products at end of life for recycling or disposal at no charge (and ban them from municipal waste stream).

Re:How to lower the price of plant-based meat by tonyarkles on Saturday February 06, 2021 @04:53PM (#26050334)
I’m on my phone at the moment and can’t break down that list line-by-line, but in Canada you already do pay surcharges for many (not all) of those things. E-waste is nominally priced at the cost of recycling for various device types; electricity, natural gas, and gasoline, and aviation all have a (not insignificant!) carbon tax associated with them.
Re:How to lower the price of plant-based meat by YeGoblynQueenne on Saturday February 06, 2021 @04:55PM (#26050353)
Good news, but that's in Canada. Where else?
Re:How to lower the price of plant-based meat by bigfudge on Saturday February 06, 2021 @05:07PM (#26050456)
Most of the EU. It’s only the US and Australia that are so backward in environmental issues among western democracies.
Re:How to lower the price of plant-based meat by YeGoblynQueenne on Sunday February 07, 2021 @09:52AM (#26055387)
I'm an EU citizen. I don't know that I'm paying taxes for e.g. the e-waste produced by electronic devices. Can you point to relevant information please?
Re:How to lower the price of plant-based meat by bigfudge on Friday February 19, 2021 @06:52PM (#26199639)
Re:How to lower the price of plant-based meat by albertgoeswoof on Saturday February 06, 2021 @04:04PM (#26049919)
Well someone is paying for all those externalities. At least let's try and make it the person who benefits from it. Why not start from meat and go from there.
Re:How to lower the price of plant-based meat by TulliusCicero on Sunday February 07, 2021 @05:46AM (#26054088)
Externalities should be baked into prices to the extent it is practical and desirable.

Practical: how easy is it to have a rough calculation of the externality's cost, and include that in the price?

Desirable: how does pricing in the externality help achieve some socially desirable objective?

Re:How to lower the price of plant-based meat by tyrust on Saturday February 06, 2021 @04:06PM (#26049943)
Those are all good ideas. I don't think they need to be implemented together and simultaneously.
Re:How to lower the price of plant-based meat by Grustaf on Saturday February 06, 2021 @05:36PM (#26050701)
Of course people should pay the true cost of what they buy or use. I can’t see how anyone could argue against that on moral grounds. You might disagree for financial reasons, but hardly out of principle.