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Comment by Mengkudulangsat | Hacker News Reader

Beyond Meat just arrived in our market a few months ago and while the product is fine, its price is absurdly expensive.

To produce it's purported benefits, Beyond Meat needs to adopt the Coca-Cola / Mcdonalds approach - license the tech / brand to local franchisees for local expansion and utilize the local agri sector for raw materials.

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Or if we started paying the actual price for real beef beyond beef would be the cheaper option. Removed the subsidies and include a carbon and water tax on food.

>include a carbon and water tax on food.

Um ok. People who subscribe to this theory can calculate the proper offset and donate to their cause of choice or, you know, moderate their food consumption to adequately reflect their opinions on food production.

The point of taxes is that they force people to pay for things whether they want to or not. This is nice because most people wouldn't want to voluntarily pay for negative externalities.

I know that there's no way I would want to pay for the ecological effects caused by my lifestyle choices for example. A tax doesn't give me the option to not pay.

The point is that these taxes help offset costs that you pay for other people, not yourself. If there was a car factory spewing toxic waste into the local water supply, would you say to your neighbors just don't buy the car if you don't like it?

Clearly the solution is to make it more expensive because it's ok to buy from that factory if you're rich :)

I’ve visited countries where there aren’t the big ag subsidies and whatnot. People still eat meat. Not to the degree we do in the US, but it’s not “unattainably” expensive and most people will consume some kind of meat with their meals —not 20oz or whatever, but they eat a “healthy” amount.

Beef is actually even cheaper in most countries without subsidies...

The price will come down. We've had beyond for about a year and at least two other competitors (that taste basically the same) have hit the market in that time, and the price seems to be drifting down. So far it's down to not much more than a good organic / free range burger patty, and when you buy it at a fast food place it's the same price as a normal burger.

economy of scale is starting to kick in and the initial cost of R&D is being recouped. I agree it is expensive, but just like solar, it will only get cheaper the more we support it.

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