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Anyone else catch this? First: “The Chinese government says its distant-water fishing fleet, or those vessels that travel far from China’s coast, numbers roughly 2,600, but other research, such as this study by the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), puts this number closer to 17,000”. Several paragraphs later: “More recently, the Chinese government has stopped calling for an expansion of its distant-water fishing…
Commercial scale cell-cultured meat can't arrive soon enough.
I worry that once that time arrives the government will force us to consume it by severely taxing actual meat.
Add to that the environmental impact, insane water usage, and the fact that meat production will continue to destroy economies through pandemics, and it should cost 10-15x more than it does now.
We badly need some sort of industrial fish farming at a large scale. Oceanic fishing at this point is basically like hunting gathering at an industrial scale: we just catch whatever we can and who cares if it grows back, not our problem, "nature" will take care of it. The same way we seed, till, etc., we should be doing the same thing with oceans and "hunting" aka fishing should only be allowed as a hobby. In a somew…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I worry that once that time arrives the government will force us to consume it by severely taxing actual meat.
Great, meat SHOULD cost a fortune. The actual cost of meat is not what you pay for it, the only reason it’s even affordable is because the taxpayer shoulders the burden of the farm subsidies. Cut those out and a $5 Big Mac would cost almost $15. Add to that the environmental impact, insane water usage, and the fact that meat production will continue to destroy economies through pandemics, and it should cost 10-15x mo…
What are they doing with all that squid? If the market price of the squid doesn't cover the cost of extraction, then that must mean there isn't much demand for the product.
Centrally planned economies don’t really factor such things in. Extract one resource at a loss to “book” a gain elsewhere. So they probably think net they are profiting from this. But then, centrally planned economies are not efficient at decision-making...
We badly need some sort of industrial fish farming at a large scale. Oceanic fishing at this point is basically like hunting gathering at an industrial scale: we just catch whatever we can and who cares if it grows back, not our problem, "nature" will take care of it. The same way we seed, till, etc., we should be doing the same thing with oceans and "hunting" aka fishing should only be allowed as a hobby. In a somew…
What we need is to stop consuming animals and animal products, or we’ll keep having economy destroying pandemics. Not to mention the obvious problem that farming is horrendous for the animals. Animals aren’t some inanimate object.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I worry that once that time arrives the government will force us to consume it by severely taxing actual meat.
Great, meat SHOULD cost a fortune. The actual cost of meat is not what you pay for it, the only reason it’s even affordable is because the taxpayer shoulders the burden of the farm subsidies. Cut those out and a $5 Big Mac would cost almost $15. Add to that the environmental impact, insane water usage, and the fact that meat production will continue to destroy economies through pandemics, and it should cost 10-15x mo…
So I'm curious where that number comes from.
What are they doing with all that squid? If the market price of the squid doesn't cover the cost of extraction, then that must mean there isn't much demand for the product.
Centrally planned economies don’t really factor such things in. Extract one resource at a loss to “book” a gain elsewhere. So they probably think net they are profiting from this. But then, centrally planned economies are not efficient at decision-making...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> We badly need some sort of industrial fish farming at a large scale. Even if we invented it, PRC would most likely not use it. > In a somewhat "positive" side effect of what they're doing, traditional Chinese medicine will probably go extinct together will all the fish and animal species they will wipe off the face of the Earth... Unfortunately, this probably only happens when everything more exotic than common far…
Why wouldn't they? They're not irrational. I understand their desire to keep their newly achieved standards of living and I imagine they don't want to be dependent on foreign seas, especially as these situations can cause conflicts. They also have a pretty big EEZ, about 1 million sqkm. Seems more than enough to have some huge fish farms.
For a long, long time, commercial fishing as they currently do it will be the cheapest way to do it. It's darn difficult to beat the cost-effectiveness of just harvesting the grown fish without any further involvement in the process. Especially given the labor conditions [1] exploited by these sorts of operations, there's no way that any domestically-operated farm could beat them out.
[1] I've been reading Ian Urbina's Outlaw Ocean on a recommendation from another comment somewhere on HN. It's eye-opening, to say the least.
Anyone else catch this? First: “The Chinese government says its distant-water fishing fleet, or those vessels that travel far from China’s coast, numbers roughly 2,600, but other research, such as this study by the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), puts this number closer to 17,000”. Several paragraphs later: “More recently, the Chinese government has stopped calling for an expansion of its distant-water fishing…
Restrict =/= reduce