4 ms·

> "Using two pounds of bait to catch one pound of lobster just didn’t make any sense." Apparently it made sense to the lobster fishermen. If the price of bait

> "Using two pounds of bait to catch one pound of lobster just didn’t make any sense." Apparently it made sense to the lobster fishermen. If the price of bait went up enough, then it wouldn't anymore. Or if using mackerel and herring as bait became illegal, it definitely wouldn't make sense.

bell-cot 4y ago
In terms of sustainably feeding ~8 billion people in a finite world - "spending" 2 pounds of seafood (bait), plus all the overhead of fishermen / boats / fuel / etc., to get 1 pound of seafood (lobster) - that is far, far beyond mere batsh*t crazy.
- AlbertCory 4y ago
  Apparently you don't have Skin In The Game, and the lobster fishermen do.
  - bell-cot 4y ago
    Does "living on the Earth, with no good alternative to that" count as Skin In The Game?
    - AlbertCory 4y ago
      Actually, no, unless you think that everyone's business is your business.
      - nerpderp82 4y ago
        We live in a society. That bait (herring) is food to a whole lot of people. It has been overfished to support lobster farming, it was taken at cost from the commons to develop a food that few can consume.
        AlbertCory 4y ago
        Tostino 4y ago
        It also double dips on the pain inflicted, but pushing the market price for that Bair fish higher than it would be if not for the market pressure imposed by this alternative bait use case.
- sannee 4y ago
  On the other hand, humanity is spending several pounds of food per day on a generic programmer and all they have to show for it is some numbers shuffling around inside of a computer. Turning less tasty food into tastier food at a 2:1 ratio honestly does not seem all that terrible in the big picture.
  - paulryanrogers 4y ago
    Considering the health of the oceans, I'm not sure the case for lobsters as meat is so strong.
- twelve40 4y ago
  isn't lobster a delicacy and in nobody's wildest dreams can feed even close to 8 billion people?
  - akiselev 4y ago
    It is now, but lobster used to be considered trash food only worth feeding to prisoners. When they die, all the stuff in their digestive tract almost immediately starts spoiling the meat so it wasn’t until canning in the mid 19th century did it become more common, as they could be cooked and canned right as they were caught. Eventually there was enough demand to support specialized boats that could keep them alive long enough to deliver to a supermarket or restaurant lobster tank and that’s when it became a delicacy. They’re expensive largely because of the infrastructure required to keep them from going bad.
bragr 4y ago
In some sense, this is no different than that a huge portion of agriculture goes to feed farm animals. It does not make sense from a purely economic nutrition delivery perspective but since people have a preference for meat, especially lobster, people are willing to bear the cost.
- AlbertCory 4y ago
  The "purely economic" perspective is why it does make sense to them. Raise the prices of the baitfish, or outlaw using them. Do you have another method?
  - bragr 4y ago
    I think realistically we're not going to make any real progress either way until there's a big cultural shift away from regular meat eating.
    - AlbertCory 4y ago
      I don't think that's required. Look, they have quotas on cod fishing, and AFAICT those are effective. Whale hunting is mostly outlawed.
    - nightski 4y ago
      There's a TON of progress that could be made without any changes in meat eating. Animal husbandry only accounts for a few % of emissions in the U.S. for example.
  - googlryas 4y ago
    They said purely "economic nutrition delivery", not merely purely economic. I assume they're talking about $/cal
- blfr 4y ago
  Eating meat and other products from higher up the food chain makes perfect nutritional sense. Much more than optimizing for calories per buck which leads to a diet full of HFCS horrors.
TheDong 4y ago
Externalities are the thing that get you, and I think are what the article is obliquely getting at with that phrasing (and the "amid concern about the state of fish stocks" later). Each poacher who kills an african elephant for the ivory is paid handsomely, and individually it perhaps makes sense to them, but it's illegal because the externality is that the african elephant would go extinct if we treated this purely as a market where "if someone will pay for ivory, that justifies it". The health of the planet is usually not able to be factored into market economics. Laws intervene, but ideally we would recognize the externalities and adjust our behavior _before_ laws come into play. We shouldn't have to wait on the law to limit carbon emissions to recognize that destroying the planet, even if it gives us more dollars in our lifetime, is a move that does not make sense for humanity as a whole. I think the framing of the article is that this inefficient use of resources makes less sense from an externalities perspective, and you're saying that it makes perfect sense from an economic perspective.
- xboxnolifes 4y ago
  What are the externalities in this lobster example? It looks less like externalities to me, and more that people would rather pay $X for a pound of lobster than <$X for 2 pounds of lobster bait. This is unlike the ivory example, where the externality is an entire species going extinct.
  - paulryanrogers 4y ago
    Driving the bait extinct
    - AlbertCory 4y ago
      Do you have any evidence for that? Because [1] says that mackerel are of "least concern." > Despite its highly commercial status, the Atlantic mackerel is listed as Least Concern by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and global catch has remained sustainable. Now, for herring: [2]'s most recent date was 2010. However, Google says: "Is herring being overfished? Image result for are herring going extinct Population Status. According to the 2022 stock assessment, Atlantic herring is overfished, but not subject to overfishing. Summary stock assessment information can be found on Stock SMART. Herring populations are naturally highly variable." [3] says "U.S. wild-caught Atlantic herring is a smart seafood choice because it is sustainably managed and responsibly harvested under U.S. regulations." [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_mackerel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_mackerel [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_herring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_herring [3] https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/species/atlantic-herring https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/species/atlantic-herring

bell-cot 4y ago

In terms of sustainably feeding ~8 billion people in a finite world - "spending" 2 pounds of seafood (bait), plus all the overhead of fishermen / boats / fuel / etc., to get 1 pound of seafood (lobster) - that is far, far beyond mere batsh*t crazy.

AlbertCory 4y ago
Apparently you don't have Skin In The Game, and the lobster fishermen do.
- bell-cot 4y ago
  Does "living on the Earth, with no good alternative to that" count as Skin In The Game?
  - AlbertCory 4y ago
    Actually, no, unless you think that everyone's business is your business.
    - nerpderp82 4y ago
      We live in a society. That bait (herring) is food to a whole lot of people. It has been overfished to support lobster farming, it was taken at cost from the commons to develop a food that few can consume.
      - AlbertCory 4y ago
      - Tostino 4y ago
        It also double dips on the pain inflicted, but pushing the market price for that Bair fish higher than it would be if not for the market pressure imposed by this alternative bait use case.
sannee 4y ago
On the other hand, humanity is spending several pounds of food per day on a generic programmer and all they have to show for it is some numbers shuffling around inside of a computer. Turning less tasty food into tastier food at a 2:1 ratio honestly does not seem all that terrible in the big picture.
- paulryanrogers 4y ago
  Considering the health of the oceans, I'm not sure the case for lobsters as meat is so strong.
twelve40 4y ago
isn't lobster a delicacy and in nobody's wildest dreams can feed even close to 8 billion people?
- akiselev 4y ago
  It is now, but lobster used to be considered trash food only worth feeding to prisoners. When they die, all the stuff in their digestive tract almost immediately starts spoiling the meat so it wasn’t until canning in the mid 19th century did it become more common, as they could be cooked and canned right as they were caught. Eventually there was enough demand to support specialized boats that could keep them alive long enough to deliver to a supermarket or restaurant lobster tank and that’s when it became a delicacy. They’re expensive largely because of the infrastructure required to keep them from going bad.

bragr 4y ago

In some sense, this is no different than that a huge portion of agriculture goes to feed farm animals. It does not make sense from a purely economic nutrition delivery perspective but since people have a preference for meat, especially lobster, people are willing to bear the cost.

AlbertCory 4y ago
The "purely economic" perspective is why it does make sense to them. Raise the prices of the baitfish, or outlaw using them. Do you have another method?
- bragr 4y ago
  I think realistically we're not going to make any real progress either way until there's a big cultural shift away from regular meat eating.
  - AlbertCory 4y ago
    I don't think that's required. Look, they have quotas on cod fishing, and AFAICT those are effective. Whale hunting is mostly outlawed.
  - nightski 4y ago
    There's a TON of progress that could be made without any changes in meat eating. Animal husbandry only accounts for a few % of emissions in the U.S. for example.
- googlryas 4y ago
  They said purely "economic nutrition delivery", not merely purely economic. I assume they're talking about $/cal
blfr 4y ago
Eating meat and other products from higher up the food chain makes perfect nutritional sense. Much more than optimizing for calories per buck which leads to a diet full of HFCS horrors.

TheDong 4y ago

Externalities are the thing that get you, and I think are what the article is obliquely getting at with that phrasing (and the "amid concern about the state of fish stocks" later). Each poacher who kills an african elephant for the ivory is paid handsomely, and individually it perhaps makes sense to them, but it's illegal because the externality is that the african elephant would go extinct if we treated this purely as a market where "if someone will pay for ivory, that justifies it". The health of the planet is usually not able to be factored into market economics. Laws intervene, but ideally we would recognize the externalities and adjust our behavior _before_ laws come into play. We shouldn't have to wait on the law to limit carbon emissions to recognize that destroying the planet, even if it gives us more dollars in our lifetime, is a move that does not make sense for humanity as a whole. I think the framing of the article is that this inefficient use of resources makes less sense from an externalities perspective, and you're saying that it makes perfect sense from an economic perspective.

xboxnolifes 4y ago
What are the externalities in this lobster example? It looks less like externalities to me, and more that people would rather pay $X for a pound of lobster than <$X for 2 pounds of lobster bait. This is unlike the ivory example, where the externality is an entire species going extinct.
- paulryanrogers 4y ago
  Driving the bait extinct
  - AlbertCory 4y ago
    Do you have any evidence for that? Because [1] says that mackerel are of "least concern." > Despite its highly commercial status, the Atlantic mackerel is listed as Least Concern by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and global catch has remained sustainable. Now, for herring: [2]'s most recent date was 2010. However, Google says: "Is herring being overfished? Image result for are herring going extinct Population Status. According to the 2022 stock assessment, Atlantic herring is overfished, but not subject to overfishing. Summary stock assessment information can be found on Stock SMART. Herring populations are naturally highly variable." [3] says "U.S. wild-caught Atlantic herring is a smart seafood choice because it is sustainably managed and responsibly harvested under U.S. regulations." [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_mackerel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_mackerel [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_herring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_herring [3] https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/species/atlantic-herring https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/species/atlantic-herring