Thank you for writing this! It was very helpful learn how these initiatives went and I found my self agreeing with much of what you wrote.
I am curious to learn more of what costly signals you had in mind when you write:
politicians wanting to make extremely costly signals to show how much they support animal agriculture — two states have already preemptively banned the sale of cultivated meat.
My initial thinking was that these were pretty low costs for these politicians: cultivated meat isn’t salient to the constituency, there are no sales in the state, and the industry is very small, so no one is really bothered to inflict a cost, but I’m curious what else I should consider.
Good point — in retrospect that was hyperbole on my part, and I should have just said “signals.”
I suppose I see banning any industry, especially for politicians who tend to favor free markets, as essentially trading off GDP for whatever cultural/electoral benefits are gained by the ban. But you’re right that the cost to the local economy is virtually zero, at least right now. I suppose that will change if cultivated meat can one day be produced affordably at scale.
Thank you for writing this! It was very helpful learn how these initiatives went and I found my self agreeing with much of what you wrote.
I am curious to learn more of what costly signals you had in mind when you write:
My initial thinking was that these were pretty low costs for these politicians: cultivated meat isn’t salient to the constituency, there are no sales in the state, and the industry is very small, so no one is really bothered to inflict a cost, but I’m curious what else I should consider.
Good point — in retrospect that was hyperbole on my part, and I should have just said “signals.”
I suppose I see banning any industry, especially for politicians who tend to favor free markets, as essentially trading off GDP for whatever cultural/electoral benefits are gained by the ban. But you’re right that the cost to the local economy is virtually zero, at least right now. I suppose that will change if cultivated meat can one day be produced affordably at scale.