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They're not irrational. They're quite rational. They'll go for whatever is cheapest. For a long, long time, commercial fishing as they currently do it will be
by flyingfences 6y ago
They're not irrational. They're quite rational. They'll go for whatever is cheapest.
For a long, long time, commercial fishing as they currently do it will be the cheapest way to do it. It's darn difficult to beat the cost-effectiveness of just harvesting the grown fish without any further involvement in the process. Especially given the labor conditions [1] exploited by these sorts of operations, there's no way that any domestically-operated farm could beat them out.
[1] I've been reading Ian Urbina's Outlaw Ocean on a recommendation from another comment somewhere on HN. It's eye-opening, to say the least.
- oblio 6y ago> For a long, long time, commercial fishing as they currently do it will be the cheapest way to do it. See, here is where I argue that's not the case. Commercial fishing has increased incredibly in the past 20 years or so. We don't have a "long, long time", unlike for oil, because we can't find new fish "reserves". We pretty much know where all the existing fish we'd like/want to eat is. I'd be surprised if fishing goes up at the current rate and we have fish to eat for more than 20 years, unless we switch to the sane thing: large scale, regulated and sustainable fish farming. Now we're basically a few years before the Fishing "Dust Bowl". Or, alternatively, we figuratively "boil the oceans" and persuade everyone who currently eats fish to not eat fish. I wish people trying this alternate approach good luck! :-)