He says: "Hipsters don’t have a taste for chicken. They have a taste for inefficiently produced chicken. The more inefficiently produced it is (more land to roam around! more “natural” feed! no “chemicals”!), the higher it is valued. Farmers, supply chain specialists, and culinary experts direct their energies towards how to convince progressives that they should feel good about the pointless but expensive measures taken to produce the food, instead of making good food cheaper.
This is another way of saying the more a trendy food hurts the poor, the more highly valued it is by hipster-progressives."
Now, maybe this is restricted to hipsters and he's right, but I have a feeling "hipster" and "progressive" are significantly overlapping terms for him.
I don't go all-in on the socially-aware eating stuff, but I try to do as much of it as is reasonable. I think people really do care about the treatment of animals and bargaining with third world producers, and environmental impact when they eat.
Actually, Ryan hurts his own case elsewhere in the post when he points out the "hipster" proclivity towards vegetarianism or veganism too. Hipster vegetable-love is actually an important signal that efficiency is a hipster value. Vegetables are often embraced, not because of their health value, but precisely because they are more efficient (economically and environmentally) per calorie than meat.
One hipster dietary habit I hate is their anti-corn stance. I love corn, both when I know that it's actually corn, and when it's processed and added to food without my knowledge. It's delicious - but there's also a hipster value here. Biofuels made from corn, while good for American farmers, isn't the best thing for the environment. So I figure the more corn I eat, the more it drives up the price of ethanol, which incentivizes energy companies to invent cleaner fuels.
One thing Ryan says that I can emphatically agree with: "bacon is good".
Efficient for whom? Coming from the mid-atlantic region, I equate "efficient" chicken farming with chickenshit and chemical runoff that starves the Bay of oxygen.
ReplyDeleteBut thank goodness there are no poor people living on the Chesapeake struggling to find work because of the environmental situation!
Not sure who you're directing this to, Evan. "Efficient" is a tough word to parse for exactly the reasons you raise. My point to Ryan is that vegetables play such a big role in this socially-aware eating culture precisely because they are concerned about multiple definitions of efficiency. Eating a higher share of vegetables is efficient on economic grounds (in terms of resource allocation), but it also economizes on the sort of externalized environmental costs that you're citing. Moreover, "socially aware" eaters explicitly acknowledge both of these benefits.
Delete"Efficient" is really a implication-laden word for economists. It doesn't necessarily mean cramming chickens into a factory farm, it might in everyday usage. If there are important external costs, that would be a very inefficient production method.
I was directing it to Ryan, assuming some of the important external costs might be glossed over. I agree on the vegetarian thing, too... and while I'm not a vegetarian, I don't eat much meat for the reasons you raise.
DeleteI always find it odd when I hear vegetarians or non-vegetarians talking about vegetarianism as an animal rights issue. That reason for the lifestyle seems old-fashioned to me, although I know there are still people who are vegetarian/vegan for that reason.
Vegans, I don't understand at all. It's bad enough to give up bacon, but to live life without cheese on top of that? That's crazy talk.
One hipster dietary habit I hate is their anti-corn stance. I love corn, both when I know that it's actually corn, and when it's processed and added to food without my knowledge. It's delicious - but there's also a hipster value here. Biofuels made from corn, while good for American farmers, isn't the best thing for the environment. So I figure the more corn I eat, the more it drives up the price of ethanol, which incentivizes energy companies to invent cleaner fuels.
ReplyDeleteNot sure what the complaint here is. The hipster anti-corn stance is actually a call for a free market policy in corn (and on the other side of the coin sugar). The only reason we even entertain the idea of making ethanol out of corn is becuase of corn subsidies. I dont know any hipsters who are happy with corn ethanol which is actually more energy intensive to make than gas.
Meat is also unnaturally cheap because of corn subsidies.
Well - I'm thinking about the whining about corn syrup.
DeleteIt's not an entirely serious addendum to a not entirely serious post.
Corn Syrup is the devil's honey, dan.
DeleteAndrew, have you never heard of Science?
ReplyDeleteThank you for posting that. I'm going to turn the volume off and pretend its the video for Bon Iver's "Skinny Love"
ReplyDeleteI define efficiency as the ratio between utility gained and price. I think putting socially-conscious arguments in your utility function is socially-unconscionable, for the reasons I go into in the post.
ReplyDelete"Vegetables are often embraced, not because of their health value, but precisely because they are more efficient (economically and environmentally) per calorie than meat."
ReplyDelete"Envirvonmentally efficient" is borderline meaningless, so let's throw that out.
And "economically efficient"? Perhaps *financially* efficient. Economically efficient is just whatever gets you closest to the solution vector of the utility maximization problem. And my argument was that hipster preferences are pernicious, so should be thrown out. If you do that, you end up eating an awful lot of meat.
Your argument is so weird. We must maximize utility, except the utility of people I don't agree with. The free market is providing goods as demanded. Suck it up.
ReplyDeleteUnder the mainstream foundations to social economics (i.e. Becker), people maximize z-goods. One z-good here is status, which I don't think anyone is going to defend. The other piece is the social norm which confers status in exchange for signaling like this. That is also worthy of attack. The z-goods that do not impinge on the poor's utility are sheer hedonistic taste and the simple need for calories. I am arguing that those are the arguments people should be maximizing, not status.
ReplyDeleteNow I'm curious about where people are allowed to express their ethics in your world. I thought that the one place you libertarian types were okay with people expressing "political" views was within the free exchange of the market. Is that not allowed now either becuase of a fake concern for the poor? Bear in mind, here, that as much as you were trying to minimize it people are "signaling" an ethical choice.
ReplyDeleteAlso, can I suggest a topic for your blog tomorrow: "How ordering an IPA at the bar increases the price of Budweiser."
I could wax philosophical about this: "proper" libertarians don't care as long as you don't use the government. "Not the government" isn't the same thing as the price system.
ReplyDeleteBut I also don't really care about how well my opinions fit in with the orthodoxy. I also have see no substantial argument against what I was saying still. You're trying to back me into reductio ad absurdum, but if the tradeoffs were sufficiently steep, I would yell at people ordering IPAs. In fact, anyone who orders Blue Moon makes me angry, although I admit there is no good reason for that.
I wonder if, in Ryan Murphy's thinking, it is also inefficient for people to live in insufficiently dense communities (i.e., suburbs versus cities)? With respect to the exchanges above, I wouldn't say that this is a special weakness of the argument for a reduction to absurdity.
ReplyDeleteI'd agree with Ryan that some of the things people ask for in factory farmed food are unreasonable, given our price and volume expectations. But some things aren't unreasonable, and many of these points seem properly determined on philosophical grounds, not only economic ones.
Ditto my point about cities versus suburbs - I take it as correct that living in cities actually does confer efficiency benefits (many of which hipsters and progressives should love, like requiring less wild land be taken over for development) but we all know that many people simply do not live well in cities.