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Comment by panarchy | Hacker News Reader

My takes:

1. Everything takes investment, that's how capitalism works and if we're in a stage of capitalism where we can no longer invest in the future then the future is doomed.

2. It also might get close, be better, or people won't care.

3. People eat meat slurry chicken nuggets without complaint. If they can price themselves cheaper (which will be hard with all the subsidies the meat industry gets to be fair) and cover it in enough batter and spices, and not draw attention to it being lab made ("Naturally tasting meat!") it will sell. Not everything needs to be a steak and eating a steak is not the most popular form of meat consumption.

4. Any reduction is good. Not everything needs to be or even should be treated like it has to be some magic bullet that completely obliterates the competition. Having options is good.

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About investment: It wasn't just that it would take investment, it was that the investment option for making difference in emissions were not feasible. From the article:

> a facility that would use huge bioreactors to produce 10,000 metric tons of meat per year at an upfront capital cost of $450 million. 10,000 metric tons might sound like a lot until you learn that it would only amount to 0.002% of meat production in the US. Further, due to the high capital expenditure, investors would have to lock themself into 30-year repayment terms to keep the price per kilogram competitive > ... > So investors are faced with the “choice” of either throwing away absurd amounts of money to maybe make the tiniest dent in our meat production or to make a profit with a niche luxury product

I feel like this is just a statement that the market for meat is supermassive and you can't just overnight have your production capacity at comparable levels to that of the entire country.

Meat itself used to be a niche luxury item.

There is a significant difference between scaling up high-tech pharma-grade facilities and just breeding more cattle.

This is actually a good point. I think I agree with the author that synthetic meat production as a 1:1 replacement for current meat consumption is not feasible, but that only leads me to question whether we should be eating all that meat in the first place.

I'm not a heavy meat eater myself — about once every 9 days — and I've read that the amount of meat I consume is the norm for human beings for most of our existence, and it's in fact unhealthy to eat much more than that. So maybe the answer isn't synthetic meat, it's just not smashing animals into our faces for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

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