The Mobile Monopoly Money Edition

One Response to The Mobile Monopoly Money Edition

1. Mujon says:

   July 22, 2018 at 12:35 pm

   I was sorely disappointed in the discussion around vegetarianism in this podcast. I generally enjoy listening to Slate Money since economics is not my sphere of expertise; however, I am occasionally exasperated and want to yell at my iPhone, because when it comes to areas that are not in the expertise of the people on the show, they nonetheless speak as if they are the authorities on topics they seem to know little if nothing about. During the discussion, not one person — not one — made mention of the recent study that the single best thing any of us can do for the planet (which is being destroyed at an astonishing rate that most of us choose simply to ignore, and which the panelists also decide to cavalierly gloss over) is to stop eating meat and dairy (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/31/avoiding-meat-and-dairy-is-single-biggest-way-to-reduce-your-impact-on-earth). Instead, the commentators engaged in an avalanche of holier than thou ridicule, without so much as acknowledging the very real issue at stake, and then cynically assumed that WeWork’s decision was merely a case of bungled “virtue signaling” (again making it easy to ignore a real, pressing, and frankly very economically important issue). And while your cultural appeal to Argentina was relevant, it didn’t acknowledge the fact that even in economic terms, studies show that cattle ranching in South America costs an estimated at $353 billion/year (when environmental impacts are incorporated rather than ignored), far exceeding the revenues of $16.6 billion that it generates. In short, I found this a rather lazy segment, and one that certainly did not take the opportunity to educate listeners on a critical issue, and if anything, allowed them to feel smug in their ignoring of environmental destruction.

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