665
Plant Milk Is Better For Us and the Climate. So Why Do We Subsidize Dairy?
(www.motherjones.com)
this post was submitted on 02 Oct 2023
665 points (88.2% liked)
politics
19233 readers
2736 users here now
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Are you familiar with the term 'tautology'?
Sometimes you have to tell children twice before they get it through their thick skulls.
Due to freedom of selection, nowhere in the world has a alt-milk market which surpasses that of traditional milk. It's because people prefer traditional milk, and not plant-paste. I'm sorry that I'm having to repeat myself for you to understand, but hey - you can lead a horse to water, you can't make it drink.
If plant/alt milk were more popular, you'd see places where it supplanted traditional milk, but you don't see that literally anywhere in the world. So, it's a hard truth. One that...due to people's confirmation bias, they don't seem to be willing to accept.
There is freedom of selection, but it's not a free market. We're literally discussing that in this post. Milk is substantially cheaper due to subsidies. Many people can't afford to simply purchase the more expensive one when a cheaper version is available. However, in a free market, it wouldn't be that much cheaper.
New products take time to surpass old products. You have false advertising and bad information floating around as truth and people think milk needs to be had to be healthy. It was so heavily advertised to boomers through millennials and even some of gen z, that I'm not surprised many have fallen for the marketing like you so heavily did.
Do you have me confused with someone who has wronged you?
My only response so far was a (admittedly cheeky) reply to your comment about how your reasoning for something being a 'hard truth' is simply because it's the way is...a complete circle, your logic on that one.
You're getting dragged by others because you opened with an objective claim that milk tastes better, which is a subjective opinion. You're now pivoting to argue that cow milk is objectively better because it's more popular? Taylor Swift isn't the best musician because she's popular. Because "best" is incredibly complex. Best guitarist? Composer? Singer? What's best of any of those categories, anyway? We gotta ask Phaedrus, I suppose.
If you're trying to argue that cow milk is the "best": Cow milk is really good at getting protein and other minerals/vitamins to folks. Really good. It's got a lot of properties that make it really useful in some recipes I love. Also I eat a lot of dairy ice cream, and yogurt. I'm not some anti-milk crusader.
Dairy production, however, is really energy- and space-intensive compared to some alternatives. There's a tradeoff to be thought carefully about, and it deserves more than "cow milk is popular therefore it's the best". Unless you're just trying to say that cow milk is popular because cow milk is popular (which no one was arguing?). If that's the case, see my first reply. Circularity complete.
I'm not arguing cow milk is popular because cow milk is popular. I'm arguing that it's popular because it is subjectively better than the alternatives.
Kind of like how dogs are 4 legged animals, but not all 4 legged animals are dogs. Your argument to that is claiming circular reasoning, but it's clearly not.
Subsidies happen because they want to keep the prices low, because it's a popular food item. The majority have chosen it, so that makes it the market leader. They didn't choose it because it was a popular choice. And so inherently that makes it what it is. The defacto best option. Sometimes you have to paint with a broad brush when talking about broad topics.
Fact is, they lack a lot of the subjective properties that make milk as useful as it is. Milk is popular because it's the best. It's not the best because of its popularity. The popularity is simply an easy to understand byproduct of its superiority.
How about actually learning what circular reasoning is.
Cool, the nuance here I can get on board with. Thanks for expanding.