How rude - especially since you don't understand the article you just quoted.
Of course consumption falls if I give something up. That's not Supply.
Your original statement was "buying less meat reduces supply", while the quote you just gave as evidence talked about "consumption", which is the demand side of the equation (technically "quantity demanded", but I'm simplifying).
If you don't like my knowledge, maybe this will help [0]. Please don't tell me I'm "just claiming things based on theory I remember" - or anyone else on HN - it's rude.
Sorry it was rude of me to assume what the source of your claim was. It is inappropriate of me to make it sound like I have a deep understanding of economics - I certainly don't.
If you have the patience, perhaps you can explain to me where the mechanism I describe fails.
If in a town 10% of people stop buying beef, grocery store will stop stocking their shelves as much as they did prior. Going up the supply chain, when more stores do this, the supplier will decrease production. Of course this takes time, but given a few-years time horizon, the effects of lower consumption do propagate to the supply.
Is your comment just a nitpick with my misunderstanding the technical language economists use? Perhaps you're commenting with an assumption of a shorter time horizon than what I have in mind?
I wasn't nitpicking. This is actually a confusing part of economics, and the language of economics (which I'm trying to avoid) makes it worse. :)
Let me give you a few real examples, but with contrived numbers for illustration.
1 - Suppose you can buy either chicken or beef. Both cost $1. Now, due to some reason, the price of beef rises. What will happen, is that some people will buy more chicken, even though the price of that didn't change. (Maybe they can't afford the beef now, maybe they're frugal, etc.)
2 - Next, suppose the same $1 for each, but the price of beef drops. Now, since it is the cheaper source of protein, some people will buy the beef instead of the chicken, simply because it's cheaper.
3 - Third example (a bit more involved): The prices of both are again $1. You and a bunch of friends decide to go without beef for a month. The price of beef will drop. Now (and this is the key part), because the price of beef is now cheaper, some number of people will buy it instead of chicken.
What has happened in example 3, is that the second half of that example is actually the same as example 2. In your example of the town buying 10% less beef, then supply will eventually self-correct, but only if nothing else (prices, prices of substitutes, supply of substitutes) changes. This push-pull action on prices and quantities tends to bounce around - that's why prices of beef, chicken, oil, timber, etc tend to change frequently.
Thank you for the explanation. I guess we all know that if 100% of people stop buying beef, companies will stop growing cows (with minor exceptions of leather etc). A challenge for a group of us, people who would like others to reduce their meat consumption, is to communicate clearly that ever without 100% reduction in supply, there will be positive change (fewer animals raised in factory farms).
The argument I lay out is that even if supermarkets aren't 100% sensitive to demand, on average, reduction of consumption does propagate through the market, and at least a part of the effect is lower "production" (fewer animals raised in the future).
I think you're 100% right that when there's more supply than consumers, it's likely that the price will drop, and with lower price, more people will be eager to buy. But I still see all this as short-term effects. When looking across a lifetime of action (consuming literally TONS less meat), an individual's choice to eat less meat makes a difference.
Perhaps I should stay away from "elasticity" in my wording, as it brings in needless attention to economic theories that can make thinking about this issue harder, not easier.
One approach to look at is a tax (the tobacco tax as an example). By increasing the price of tobacco products, people will naturally migrate away from them.
Although the taxes were/are astronomical in the US, some people continue to buy them. Many fewer people, but still $ billions in sales every year.
You can take this approach with pretty much anything - tobacco, beef, soft drinks, carbon-based energy, foreign imports, etc., and it keeps it simple.
I'm all in favor of meat taxes. I suspect that most people (in the US at least) are in favor of change of how animals are treated in factory farms. But their refrain from changing anything about their behavior is "the government should do something about it". While government action would be the best scenario (outlawing battery cages, adding taxes on meat, etc), doing nothing isn't an appropriate personal response.
Before I reduced my meat consumption to virtually zero, my last concern was "how could I, a tiny individual, make any difference?" And then I heard the expected value argument (where my purchase could result in an extra bulk order from the supplier - so even if low probability, it was still better to abstain).
> "If someone gives up 1 lb of chicken, total consumption falls by 0.76lb in expectation."
https://reducing-suffering.org/comments-on-compassion-by-the...