The Gray Tribe Is Not in Control

Does lab-grown meat really accelerate economic growth?

If they got the cost below meat it would be significant, even if the cost was a little higher people might appreciate environmental and/or health benefits.

Now the cost is orders of magnitude higher. Maybe if we expanded the economy 100x we could afford to eat lab grown meat but not the other way around.

I believe they can get the price down, maybe even by a lot, but even if they do how big of a change is it really?

I was a vegan from 1994-2002 or so but animal husbandry became the family business and now I eat whatever both meat but also protein source I learned from veganism and bodybuilding which include: ideas from Diet for a small planet on home food science and protein combining, Tofu, Tempeh, Seitan, Quorn, Boca Burgers, dry milk powder, whey protein powder (gold standard for athletes but dairy farmers struggle to get rid of the stuff), eggs (a miracle even at pandemic prices), not to mention legumes, pulses, and all sort of lesser known cereals and pseudocereals, etc. Not to mention all sorts of advances in animal husbandry, an omic understanding enough to perfect tissue culture will probably be a boon to conventional meat production.

Produced by the largest, most globalized and competitive (bangladesh vs louisiana for rice!) market in the world.

Assuming somebody makes it work they will have patents that will keep lab grown meat from being as competitive as its competitors for another 15 years. Ho Hum. I don't see why people think Impossible Burgers are so great, I like Boca Burgers just fine.

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These folks have to work harder to make a list of transformative technologies. I'll add one:

Advanced Manufacturing

it is motivated by problems of deglobalization: what if a country like Venezuela could produce everything it needs in its borders at low cost? It is motivated by globalization too because we all need to compete. It is motivated by the CO2 problem, waste problems, pollution problems, lowering costs, improving quality, etc. It is motivated by the need of extended space travel such as Mars colonization, asteroid resources, etc.

Drexler's ideas are an inspiration although his "atom at a time" strategy doesn't seem to work. There are other routes that can be combined such as 3-d printing, synthetic biology, microfluidic chemistry, etc. One goal would be to make a Mars colony self supporting with a minimal population but us flatlanders have the same problem. I mean, a doctor on Mars really wants a drug synthesizer (maybe leaning towards biological and mRNA drugs) but a doctor in Rwanada wants it just as much.

It's great because you don't have to solve the whole problem to be commercially successful, if you can figure out a way to make some family of products better and cheaper than before that turns into $ directly.