This article is factual yet also rage-bait. Suspending accounts is something he's doing now. Contacting employers of people working at car companies and investment firms is something he did five years ago. The article does not say he is contacting the employer of accounts he is suspending now; they leave you to infer that by placing both facts in the same headline but separate paragraphs.
Even before gaining control of Twitter, Musk would take a proactive approach to addressing criticism.
Back in 2018, The Wall Street Journal reported that Musk actively monitored Twitter for tweets containing the hashtag $TSLA, often used by Tesla short-sellers. Musk would reach out to executives at companies to investigate employees who were potentially publishing negative tweets about his electric vehicle company.
During that time, Musk reportedly emailed former Volkswagen CEO Herbert Diess in July 2018, questioning whether one of Diess's employees was using Twitter to criticize Tesla anonymously. Business Insider later reported that Volkswagen determined the tweets were posted by the employee's brother.
Musk also allegedly texted Lawrence Fossi's employer. According to the WSJ, on July 23, 2018, Musk sent a text to the top executive at Fossi's company, asking the boss whether he knew his employee, known on Twitter as Montana Skeptic, "was obsessively trashing Tesla via a pseudonym," as disclosed in the report.
Musk would reach out to executives at companies to investigate employees who were potentially publishing negative tweets about his electric vehicle company.
Probably get a unit w/o having it implanted, modify it, then get it installed unofficially. (Don’t ask who or where, because that won’t be shared publicly, as it will almost certainly be illegal).
I don’t understand owning a computer that you don’t fully control but using prosthetics that can be remotely disabled? This is why we need true open source GPL brain implants.
I’m daily driving Linux. And, frankly, for my eye implant, I’ll probably buy from apple.
I mean, no, I will buy something else, jailbreak foss it, will have to patch it while being blind from an update, and proudly tell everyone no friggin government will be able to backdoor my eye. But oh boy I’ll wish I bought one from apple, cuz those guys never go blind from updates.
This isn’t a prosthetic that was remotely disabled, this is failing hardware that doesn’t have support from the original company which is in the process of going bankrupt.
I get where you’re coming from, and agree. Prosthesis and health devices should absolutely not be remotely controllable by a company. But you can’t really help a company shutting down.
And I highly doubt there are any open source implants which help sure blindness that are ready for prime time.
But still, if the technology is open, then someone may design some compatible replacement hardware. Imagine some makers community rig a replacement for the blind without carrying about profitability.
The other side of that coin though, is if you really want random people tinkering with things directly attached to your body, without having a proper way to test beforehand?
These types of devices need to go through testing before they reach human trials for a reason. While I’m happy to trust security of data and even control of my while home to FOSS communities, I honestly don’t know that I’d trust anonymous individuals online with no skin in the game with my literal body.
Yeah, that’s a legitimate concern, but letting this technology die along with a dying company is a waste. Imagine it getting brought by some patent trolls who wouldn’t do anything with it.
He is clearly speaking in the context of a private company, such as neuralink, creating the technology. Come on dude why are you feigning ignorance here? Everyone is on the same page.
Yeah, like this is technology I’ve wanted since I was a kid, the stuff I wish people were talking about when they say VR, instead of screens you wear on your head and motion-detection controllers. Video games are a lot better when they are dynamic and current VR tech can’t really do that yet.
But that said, I’ll die never experiencing that before trusting anything Elon Musk is involved with.
This latest housing crisis has made it abundantly clear that allowing wealthy individuals and corporations to own single family homes is destructive to society as a whole.
The priority should be owner occupied homes. People need housing security. If even the middle class with career jobs can’t afford a modest house in their peak working years, the system is broken.
We can attack this runaway housing inflation by doing the following:
Ban companies (including hedge funds, etc) from owning condos and houses. Apartment complexes are still fair game, because society needs high occupancy buildings which require more capital to build and run.
Limit individual ownership to 3 (as an example, number doesn’t matter) dwellings. This will curb the rampant “buy for short term rental, parlay into next purchase for short term rental” scheme. We still need rental properties, and small local landowners should be the priority.
Heavy penalties for selling in under 2 (as an example) years. This will also curb the short term rentals due to added risk, as well as curbing the flippers relisting at 30%+ (and I’ve seen 100%) markups after 3 months.
Each of these wouldn’t be outright bans which would potentially too big of a disruption. But in phases, using increasing tax penalties as the stick.
We need to stop treating homes as a commodity. They are a basic essential.
I’d argue that better urbanism is part and parcel of real estate reform. It would be much more difficult to entirely fuck up the housing market if we weren’t so utterly dependent on single family homes and there were more apartments being managed by small to mid-size firms.
I think there is value provided when someone buys a dilapidated house and renovates it into something worthwhile to sell, even if it takes less than 2 years.
Or for me personally, I bought less than 2 years ago but the experience has given me a better idea of what I really want and I’d love to be able to sell to break even on this place and buy a different place that more fits my needs.
High short term capital gains taxes would help with the 2nd case (as I don’t intend to make money from owning this place briefly) but not the first.
I’ll take capital gains tax as a reasonable compromise.
I will say that I don’t think keeping “renovation” flippers intact is a strong motivation. They are infamous for putting in shoddy cosmetic work to hide serious problems. At least if someone needs to occupy a renovated house for 2 years, they may actually be motivated to do things right.
I absolutely agree that we need to focus significant energy on a more stable housing (not homeowner) market.
However
Ban companies (including hedge funds, etc) from owning condos and houses. Apartment complexes are still fair game, because society needs high occupancy buildings which require more capital to build and run.
This just means fewer homes get built, period, adding to the problem. Id support restrictions on these groups purchasing homes specifically on the secondary market instead of an outright ban/strong Pigouvian tax.
Heavy penalties for selling in under 2 (as an example) years. This will also curb the short term rentals due to added risk, as well as curbing the flippers relisting at 30%+ (and I’ve seen 100%) markups after 3 months.
This will straight up just lead to bankruptcy, foreclosure, and then cheap speculation. This would be incredible dangerous, and you’d need to put a lot of protections in for homeowners that wouldn’t somehow be abused by flippers.
I’d also love to see protections baked in for people who purchase prior foreclosure/condemned properties and turn those into marketable/livable homes - that’s an increase in supply and we should encourage it
What we primarily need is to rip our zoning policies out by the root and encourage lots of building, as I’m sure you’d agree, but that’s a local problem. These changes at the federal level, once hammered out, could help a lot.
Ban companies (including hedge funds, etc) from owning condos and houses. Apartment complexes are still fair game, because society needs high occupancy buildings which require more capital to build and run.
This just means fewer homes get built, period, adding to the problem. Id support restrictions on these groups purchasing homes specifically on the secondary market instead of an outright ban/strong Pigouvian tax.
Disagree. How does this discourage builders? Afaik, most don’t build with the intent of renting out individually. The intent is to sell. And at least in my high demand area, units are sold well in advance to actually being ready to live in.
Unless you mean the necessary first step of buying land with an existing home on it. In which case, it’d be easy to add fair exemptions.
Heavy penalties for selling in under 2 (as an example) years. This will also curb the short term rentals due to added risk, as well as curbing the flippers relisting at 30%+ (and I’ve seen 100%) markups after 3 months.
This will straight up just lead to bankruptcy, foreclosure, and then cheap speculation. This would be incredible dangerous, and you’d need to put a lot of protections in for homeowners that wouldn’t somehow be abused by flippers.
How so? Most buyers are entering a 30 year mortgage with their finances thoroughly vetted. If you’re saying the first 2 years is extremely risky, maybe those loan regulations need to be revised.
Besides which, as someone else in the thread mentioned, perhaps a heavy capital gains tax in the first 2 years is more appropriate.
What we primarily need is to rip our zoning policies out by the root and encourage lots of building, as I’m sure you’d agree, but that’s a local problem. These changes at the federal level, once hammered out, could help a lot.
Of course, building is a necessary component. But it’s touted as the only solution. Realistically, building high density living won’t make a dent in housing prices, because new high density living in high demand areas will always be built as “luxury” condos that demand a high price. Builders are not motivated to flood the marked to lower their own returns. They will time their projects to trickle out to keep demand high and returns maximized.
Besides which, as someone else in the thread mentioned, perhaps a heavy capital gains tax in the first 2 years is more appropriate.
I didn’t see this, but I would definitely agree with this. Really simple lever to pull, something that can be offset if need be, and will definitely have the impact we’re looking for.
Realistically, building high density living won’t make a dent in housing prices, because new high density living in high demand areas will always be built as “luxury” condos that demand a high price
This frees up housing downstream, and the builders make money by building, not by the eventual value of the home.
This ties in with point 1 above and why I think it will cut production. Right now there is essentially 0 risk in serving as capital to build housing, and we should be piling on that to build as much as possible.
I still don’t understand how this hasn’t been a bigger priority in government. I wouldn’t expect Republicans to care about it at all, but it feels like nobody is giving it any attention at the State or National level. These out-of-control rents and housing prices are insane. I’ve got a relatively ok salary and I’m barely staying on top of things, but I don’t know how the hell anybody else is still holding it together.
The Dems only real position right now is “not being Republicans.” They’re barely able to maintain the status quo and prevent us from backsliding further, there’s very little chance that any forward progress towards a better future is going to come from them.
Not sure why you’re getting down voted so much. We have no truly leftist or left of center parties in this country. We have fascism-lite and status quo right.
When Nixon won he won by a super large percentage. Almost all the states were red. Look at the electoral map for Nixon’s win, if you can find it, it’s shocking. You know why it looked like that? The DNC ran a progressive candidate. And they’ve not done that again since.
Not saying Dems aren’t better, by far they are, but they aren’t progressive and we can’t expect them to enact progressive changes.
Just gotta keep voting for the lesser of the evils until these dinosaurs either retire from, or die in, office. It’s sad, it’s frustrating, but it is all we can do for now. Keep voting for the party not actively rooting for a dictatorship and we might make it through this.
My mantra is, “change happens everywhere but the general”
General elections need to be reformed before a real progressive candidate has a chance at election, and even then, a progressive president has little chance of enacting real reform once in office.
Those reforms happen and the local, state, and Congress level, and even more often they happen at the union and labor level.
People are bickering over our binary choice for president, but the real focus should be on the lower offices. When you’re shooting to kill, you dont aim for the head and fire once , you aim for center-mass and steady yourself for repeat shots. Or I guess you get real close and use a sawed-off.
This is why I hate the Dems. They aren’t fucking doing anything. Yeah, they aren’t Republicans, but they claim they can’t get anything done because the Republicans won’t let them. Then why are they letting the Republicans get so much evil shit done? How is it that one side can accomplish their agenda and the other side sits and goes "sorry guys, they don’t want to share their power so we won’t be able to accomplish our goals lol better luck next time. " Fucking useless twats.
Landlords have a constant stream of income that they can use to affect politics while that same stream of income negates the occupant’s ability to influence politics. Renters ought to unionize.
As always, citizens united was a disaster for our country. Or at least, it was a disaster before, and citizens united turbo fucked an already terrible problem.
These reforms may result in housing prices decreasing or holding steady. Which is a plus for anyone entering or laterally moving to occupy. It’s a negative for people using housing as an investment.
It’s not a stretch to assume that a lot of politicians are in the multiple land ownership territory. And thus, would “hurt” them personally.
Same with WFH endangering commercial real estate. Lobbies and personal interest. Plenty of business owners in politics.
It’s not a stretch to assume that a lot of politicians are in the multiple land ownership territory. And thus, would “hurt” them personally.
More to the point, it will cost them any support among suburban homeowners, which is how we got here in the first place. That’s a massive bloc of voters and very few homeowners don’t see their homes as an investment
There’s also the fact that plummeting property values is really hard to sell to the majority of the voting base. Many homeowners won’t vote for someone who will tank their often largest asset. A lot of the middle class has a lot of their money in mortgages on their primary home.
HOAs should be banned too. They’re nominally constitutional under the first amendment but the restrictions they impose are not worth the price you pay in dues and they only serve to restrict the actual property owner from pursuing happiness. Everything the HOA could do is a function of local government, there’s no sane reason to pay both property taxes and HOA fees.
I don’t think they should be banned, but their power should be severely restricted.
My HOA is actually useful because they’ve banned short term rentals, put a cap on long term rentals, and cover the insurance. Granted, this is a place where walls are shared.
I also don’t see my local government ever taking care of these things under any realistic scenario.
Exorbitantly high residential property tax rates, with even higher owner-occupancy credits.
Landlords will stop renting, and start issuing land contracts or private mortgages. “Tenants” will hold the deed to the property, and be earning equity. “Landlords” will have a major incentive to get their investment properties under contract and out of their name, lest they face a huge tax bill.
We still need rental properties, and small local landowners should be the priority.
Landlords aren’t necessary for rentals to exist. We built hundreds of thousands of government owned properties every year(!) the UK’s post-war period. Some of them have bad rep for looking like soviet blocks, but modern social flats look like any other now so that isn’t a valid complaint anymore (I have to point them out to friends, they otherwise wouldn’t have a clue). These can and have been very much used for temporary accommodation, like private rental units.
If you’re more of a market economy fan: we also state-funded housing cooperatives, democratically owned housing. Vienna is the popular example where they even have shared communal swimming pools, but 20% of Norway’s entire population lives in them and they’re still growing steadily despite not having gov. funding for decades. It’s not impossible to come up with a way to use these as rental units while retaining the democratic element (i.e. the renters “own” the flat while they rent it and “sell” it on when they move). In Norway, for example, you’re exempt from property transfer taxes when you sell a coop flat meaning there’s no tax friction if you want to move from one coop flat to another. Since the flat is never technically yours in a coop (only the share giving you the right to reside there) it just goes back to the coop when you move out, and they can handle renting it on to someone else (so you don’t need a slow bartering process to move out). Your rent can also straight up go towards a larger share in the property, so you’re not propping up some landlord, the only thing you’re really paying for is management of the coop like you would with a privately owned block of flats anyway (except the coop probably wouldn’t spend thousand on an Xmas tree).
If we’re going to be thinking about government regulation and law changes anyway, we may as well try more than just small ““ethical”” landlords. They may well be part of it in some limited way but let’s think beyond just that.
“[Kevin Klowden, chief global strategist at the Milken Institute] explained that the work stoppage will impact other businesses besides production, including restaurants, catering companies, trucking agencies, and dry cleaning businesses, among many others. ‘The main thing we’re really factoring into it is the lost wages,’ Klowden told Yahoo Finance Live”
Got to sow that discontent for the strikers among other workers. As if the Hollywood business execs give 2 shits.
Also checked up about this Milken Institute and of course it’s some scumbag think tank. The opening paragraph on their Wikipedia page is great and totally makes them seem like a reputable and unbiased source.
“The institute was founded in 1991 by Michael Milken, a former Drexel Burnham Lambert banker who gained notoriety for significant financial success as a pioneer of “junk bonds” as well as his subsequent felony conviction and prison sentence for U.S. securities law violations.”
“The institute was founded in 1991 by Michael Milken, a former Drexel Burnham Lambert banker who gained notoriety for significant financial success as a pioneer of “junk bonds” as well as his subsequent felony conviction and prison sentence for U.S. securities law violations.”
He’s seems like one of those shady ass business types that will run a company into the ground while trying to maximize his personal earnings before he skips town on a solid gold private jet.
Looking at the numbers given on Wikipedia is ludicrous.
“Milken’s compensation while head of the high-yield bond department at Drexel Burnham Lambert in the late 1980s exceeded $1 billion over a four-year period, a record for U.S. income at that time.”
That’s already nuts but then you look at the company’s financials and its even more insane.
Revenue: US$4.8 billion (1968)
Net Income: US$545.5 million (1968)
The guy was syphoning off a whole fifth of the company’s entire revenue for the last years of its existence before it went bankrupt.
You’re doing a terrible job on selling them as a grifter. They sound a lot like those 80s sociopathic investment bankers that buy companies and then gut the company and destroy lives to make more money.
At least a grifter has to work to get the grift going.
Even if these two just swallowed their pride and funded free music education for all ages we’d at least have thousands of Mozarts…
…do these guys even listen to contemporary composers anyway? Could they even identify a modern Mozart? My bet is no. They just have so much ego they believe they’d know about it instantly despite their lack of any intimate knowledge of the subject.
If you look at the history of scientific discovery, you'll find that a great many of those making discoveries were born into wealth, or at least some degree of stability.
Finally, almost an entire generation that recognizes playing the owner’s rigged game just makes you a sucker.
Subsist and save your entire life, conflating the pressure to be miserable living for rich owners who don’t care to know your name with being “responsible,” as they’ve propagandized most to believe, and for what?
If you don’t get hit by a bus or a tumor getting there, to be a withered husk in one of our many almost-dead communities, thrown away by family too busy playing the same rigged game you did to care for you? Sitting in front of a TV you can’t see clearly, too broken from work and time to do the things you always told yourself you’d get to do one day as your reward for studiously toiling for entitled sociopaths barking orders remotely from their lives of perpetual vacation that you were trained from Kindergarten to live most of your waking life for like a good lil’ doggy?
It’s not their whole generation sadly. If you get on TikTok you’ll see plenty of gen Z with completely boomer, highly individualistic, analysis of some systemic issues going on right now.
I’m not sure how perfectly reflective tiktok is of the views of the generation as a whole. I know the meme is that gen z is “the tiktok generation” but you also have to distinguish users from creators, and also note the huge bias any one viewer has based on what tiktok decides to show them.
after the USSR fell they didn't think they had anything to worry about and went whole hog on us, assuming we'd never break. unfortunately for them we're getting closer and closer. I'd argue that we already have the base level of dissatisfaction necessary for a revolution, we just lack the organizing needed
Yep. We now know Univeraal Basic Income (UBI) works well, even when it’s not remotely enough to live on. People buy transport, or childcare, or medicine, or whatever they really need, to get to work.
My un-generous hot take is that leaders opposed to UBI sure look like they’re only opposed, because UBI disrupts their plans to establish a slave class in the social strata.
Bad idea. Next thing you know these guys will have enough free time to vote. And they’ll probably vote for stupid stuff like child care, education, bicycle infrastructure, and criminalizing food waste. It will basically become illegal to make a profit on basic human needs. And then what’s left for profiting?
But that’s what I don’t understand. You can’t have a slave class if they’re all dead. Isn’t a slave class more useful, more productive, if they’re alive, reproducing, and consuming?
You just need a high enough turnover whether through forced birth legislation, making it difficult or impossible to get birth control or sex education, or increasing immigration
Reagan took the deficit from $70 billion to $175 billion. Bush 41 took it to $300 billion. Clinton got it to zero. Bush 43 took it from zero to $1.2 trillion. Obama halved it to $600 billion. Trump’s got it back to a trillion."
Politifact rates that Mostly True. This is dated before the Biden Administration, of course.
You can bet your ass that this fucker knows this perfectly well. Just the fact that this dude has the gall to tell such a bald faced lie shows how little facts count in US politics.
They directly reference the data from the feds, which shows that the direct statement isn’t completely true. It does show that democrats(Clinton in particular) were better about not increasing the deficit.
Well, yeah, it’s never really as simple as all that. Clinton, in particular, has to get most of his budgets past Newt Gingrich in the House. Newt, for all his many, many faults, might have been the last Republican to care about actually balancing the budget, as opposed to just talking about balancing it while cutting taxes.
this is the same old song and dance whenever a democrat is in office.. we suddenyl cant afford anything, and were about to collapse... but when a republican gets into office its tax-cuts alll the way regardless of debt. debt is never even mentioned.
That’s not really what people consider “stocks” but yes of a lot of economists and political theorists were able to debate the details of the policy people could decide and urge their reps to do the right thing. Worth a shot I guess.
It’d be better just to require blind trusts. The trust has a fiduciary duty to invest their money well, and the politician can write a letter requesting a certain high-level investment strategy prior to the start of their term (ie, primarily large cap, primarily bonds, high/low risk tolerance). If they want they can add or remove money as USD during their term and they’ll get back whatever’s left at the end.
What is your solution, that she resign or that she divorces her husband whom she married in college? Her husband’s primary income is from the investment firm he owns, so basically she cannot be a legislator while married to him if those are the rules.
Former Congressman Stephen Buyer went to prison for 2 years for insider trading.
What is Nancy Pelosi’s insider trade? I recommend submitting a tip to the SEC, you could get payed a pretty penny for it if it leads to evidence and a conviction.
I would sooner reform shared finances of married couples, at least that of congress, or better yet bar shareholders from running for office, than end Nancy’s marriage of 60 years over her supposed insider trading (which I’ve never even seen a decent argument about, if anything Paul’s trades are kind of shit given her position of power).
That’s exactly the issue, in the USA marriage gives joint ownership of assets barring anything outlined in prenuptial agreements. So while Nancy Pelosi has never traded any stocks she still reports all of her husbands stock trades as per the transparency legislation that she helped pass into law. Paul Pelosi would also be banned from trading stocks, his lifelong primary employment, as a result of the ban.
Legislators, members of governments and their households should either be forbidden from doing insider trading, with regular detailed audits to ensure it, or should be forced to use blind trusts for investments.
I wish more people could have been like Carter. He wasn’t perfect, far from it, but he was a legend given the time period and how he spent his later years.
Gen Zers are increasingly looking for ways to prioritize quality of life over financial achievement at all costs. The TikTok trend of “soft life”—and its financial counterpart “soft saving”—is a stark departure from their millennial predecessors’ financial habits, which were rooted in toxic hustle culture and the “Girlboss” era.
“Soft savings” is, to my understanding, the opposite of savings – it’s about investing resources into making yourself happy now versus forever growing your savings for some future good time. It sounds ridiculous because they’re hitting on good critiques of capitailsm, but using the language of capitalism itself.
I think this really bolsters my argument that the self-diagnosis trend might be better understood as young people being critical of society, but their education system completely failed them. Since they lack access to critical, social, and political theory, they don’t have a vocabulary to express their critiques, so they’ve used the things we have taught them, like the language of mental health, to sorta make up their own critical theory. When mental health experts are super concerned and talk about how all these teens’ self-diagnoses are “wrong,” they’re missing the point. It’s a new theory using existing building blocks.
I‘m sorry but..girlboss and hustle culture? I only remember "YOLO" and "treat yo self" financial habits. Do I have to turn in my millenial membership card somewhere now?
I noticed a lot of 92-96ish babies feel the same way. Either they agree with most of both Millennial stuff and the Gen Z stuff, or they really don't relate to either for whatever reason.
Grew up on the whole “bootstraps and fuck you” because that’s how my family was raised (staunchly god fearing), now I’m like “I’ve upcycled my bootstraps to a noose because fuck this capitalistic hellscape”. But I don’t know where that puts me xD
"god fearing" means their worldview is one of dictators and dictated, and even their spirituality is based around the ultimate dictator in the north korea in the sky
Beef is the biggest mass consumed culprit. I think mutten might be worse, but it isn’t eaten nearly as much.
My point is, if you struggle to reduce meat consumption, just reducing beef consumption would make a big difference. Next time you are out, get a chicken sandwich instead of a burger. It’s that simple.
This is the actual reason I default to chicken and sometimes opt for fish. And oat milk. It’s not everything, but it’s a hell of a lot better than eating beef five nights a week and barely required any effort on my part.
Next time you are out, get a chicken sandwich instead of a burger. It’s that simple.
I wish it was that simple, but it isn’t. If consumers replace chicken with beef, chicken will get more expensive and beef will get less expensive. Maybe some factory farmers and slaughterhouses will change species and ranchers will hire a PR firm to start a “eat more beef” add campaign. A new equilibrium will be reached with no significant impact on animal welfare or the climate, because the meat industry is well aware that consumer preferences shift over time and is happy to accommodate those shifts as long as consumers keep eating meat.
What sends a message is vegetarianism or veganism. And, to a lesser extent, buying your meat from a local cooperative or raising your own. Taking money out of the pockets of the factory farm industry as a whole saves animals and sends a message. Just eating less beef doesn’t.
It isn’t about sending a message, it is about reducing GHG emissions.
As far as prices, maybe. I don’t know the ins and outs of raising animals for food. I don’t think meat prices are entirely supply and demand due to different costs in raising different animals.
your link is new to me, so i dug through it a bit, checked some references, and i’ve decided the methodology is bad, and the authors either know this or they should have known this. the primary source for the LCA comparisons says, in plain english, in the introduction that LCA’s should not be used for comparisons due to a lack of control for the data gathering procedures. the actual paper’s purpose was to, i shit you not, ignore this guidance, average every datapoint they could find for any food type, and then stock them together in one paper… to let you compare LCAs. this is shoddy work.
i didn’t bother to go digging into the tertiary sources on which your link relies, but i will say i did some of the reading into the sources for other papers on the impacts of animal agriculture, and i have yet to find any investigation that doesn’t attribute to livestock all of the impacts of everything in their diet. that seems reasonable: if a cow eats it, then it should be counted. but that falls apart under scrutiny. my primary example is that, in the united states, many cattle are fed cottonseed. cottonis not a food crop, though. it’s a textile. the cottonseed is a byproduct, and whether we feed it to cattle or press it for oil, any such use is actually reclaiming resources. how should that be counted? it’s not as though cottonseed is an essential part of cattle diets, it’s only through the happenstance of its availability and relative price point that it’s in there at all.
and this just points at a larger problem: everything in our agricultural sector is so intertwined and interdependent that the impact of anything is a mercurial notion, that changes on a seasonal basis dependent on the weather, technology, and people’s feelings.
i don’t believe beef can’t be raised sustainably (which is to say, indefinitely on a given plot of land, given sufficient sun and rainfall). i’m open to data about this, but cattle were among the first domesticated animals, and we’ve seen all kinds of climate change since then, so cattle can’t be the problem in-and-of themselves.
About half of the emissions from cattle are from methane; methane has about 80x the warming impact over 20 years that CO2 has.
Beyond that, cattle are slaughtered at 1 to 2 years old, while meat chickens are slaughtered at around 2 months. Cattle have worse feed conversion rates because they live longer.
as I said above, it’s almost impossible to actually quantify the effects of any agricultural activity due to the interdependencies and variances in the industry. show me the source for you “half of the emissions” claim, and I’ll show you a flawed methodology and a counterexample to the claim.
According to www.mdpi.com/2076-2615/2/2/127/htm conventional feedlot beef produces 501,593 kg of methane per 1 million kg of beef, mostly from both burps and composting manure. So that’s about .5 kg of methane per kg of beef.
1 lb of methane is 84 kg CO2e; that is to say over 100 years 1 kg of methane warms the planet the same as releasing 84kg of CO2. So every kg of beef produces 42kg of CO2e, regardless of any quibbling about the CO2e of agricultural waste fed to cows.
By contrast, googling quickly the quoted CO2e emissions per kg of chicken is 18.2. Which is, of course, subject to the same quibbling.
i will be digging into the methodology in a little while, but I found this part of the summary might indicate it’s not as bad as it is sometimes made out to be.
All beef production systems are potentially sustainable
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