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- Hacker News
- As a society, we have organized ourselves in a form where the marketers get the most cut than the producers of goods and services. It’s unfortunate and amendable with capable leadersby bicepjai
- Save you a click:
"The rancher is selling calves for record sums, but is not better off because he has higher costs. The feedlot company is selling for all-time high prices, but it also has to pay them in the first place. The packers are losing money because there is a limit to what they can charge. Restaurants and supermarkets also can only increase prices by so much."
by bz_bz_bz - Many people see this as a problem, but I see it as a normal function of market economies. Disruptions, changes in government policy, changes in consumer behavior, and more will over the long term just work themselves out. Of course some policies or seemingly "voluntary" policies may cause undue price increases, but even those work themselves out.
At the end of the day as more and more people want to consume the same products the prices for those are going to just go up.
When I see folks really hammering on price increases for products like beef or gas I can't help but think of how absolutely screwed we are in terms of addressing climate change if it involves consumer behavior.
by ericmay - you can increase profits through volume or margin.
right now we are in a whole economy experiment to see how long you can increase margin through price increases and shrinkflation.
by dastbe - Inflation mainly. And it's going to get worse as the Republicans appear to keep purposely doing things to cause inflation (tariffs, pointless wars based on ego, negotiating in bad faith and making money from said failed negotiations by insider trading, etc).by JohnTHaller
- There should be laws ensuring that every market there should be at least 5-6 players and is free or is declared natural monopoly/monopsony and regulated.
The in between you have all the bad from monopolies in the forms of cartels.
by ReptileMan - My father-in-law grew up on a small-time farm and then went into environmental engineering as a professor, and briefly worked on the Secretary of Agriculture's staff in the Biden administration. He has told me that there are 3-5 (can't remember the number) colossal meatpacking corporations in the US that have laid waste to smaller-time competition, and now that the market is captured their owners and shareholders can skim basically whatever they want out of the enterprise. He also was advocating to have policy written that would stop chronic underpayment of slaughterhouse and meatpacking workers at these colossal firms and was told it was politically inviable.
Unrelated to this, but I have Alpha-Gal Syndrome, the anaphylactic allergy to red meat, which is spreading rapidly as the ticks colonize every square inch of nature in the US. In Arkansas 20% of people tested on a big free testing day were sensitized to the galactose-alpha-1,3-galactose molecule (AGS is sensitization + symptoms, not just sensitization.)
I think that things are going to get weird with beef in the US in the next few decades.
by quacked - > In Arkansas 20% of people tested on a big free testing day were sensitized to the galactose-alpha-1,3-galactose molecule
What effect does this have on the person?
by manyatoms - I just learned about Alpha-Gal Syndrome yesterday through a Radiolab podcast. It was really interesting, but they didn't mention that it was spreading. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, since climate change.
- From the article:
"Four companies - Tyson, JBS, Cargill and National Beef - control around 85% of American beef processing.
That high level of market concentration has drawn accusations of price-fixing, even from President Trump.
So you might expect that those four firms are currently making huge profits from high beef prices. Yet the opposite is happening.
Tyson, the biggest of the four, reported in May that it had lost more than $500m on beef in the first half of its financial year."
by pingou - The article specifically talks about how some of those huge meatpacking companies are losing money on cattle. I don't think it's them to blame in totality here.by richwater
- Beef prices have become simply insane. The value I get from beef can no longer justify the expense, so I've simply stopped buying it at all. I've largely replaced it with pork. Pork used to be the most popular meat in the US. I wonder if it will be again.by JohnFen
- The neat part is that there is no inflation here: you just substituted a worse product for a better one and our friends in the govt call it good.
- I think I might just start mainlining lamb and veal. Not much cheaper than the beef these days.by nukethebay
- Even discount beef has worse discounts. My grocery store changed out the 50% discount stickers for meat at its sell-by date to 30%.by Jach
- Same here, I haven't had beef in over 2 years now. Chicken and pork only now, mostly chicken, like 90% chicken is all I eat now. Insane.by aleksandrm
- Probably, along with “meat fillers” and blends/grinds. And lots of ramen, which seems to have replaced old Depression-era standbys like hot dog casseroles and Campbell’s soup.by iamnothere
- Maybe americans will start eating Philippino pag-pag? (recycled meat from landfills)by Schlagbohrer
- Outside of a ribeye, I much prefer pork and eat it way more often. I'm rather selfishly afraid that everyone running from beef is going to cause the pork price to skyrocket, but I haven't seen it quite yet.by silisili
- > And while meatpacking companies have increased the prices they charge for their beef, there is a limit. This is because supermarkets, restaurants – and US consumers – can, and will, simply switch to buying chicken or cheaper imported beef instead.
I think you would be amazed at how cost insensitive some Americans are and how large that cohort is. Ground beef would have to exceed $20/lb before I would consider altering my routine.
If you are buying one cut at a time and not being very efficient with it, the prices are certainly ridiculous. If each gram of beef is carefully prepared and allocated across weeks of meal prep, the economic situation changes pretty substantially. Batching effects can make it easier to afford expensive ingredients.
by bob1029 - For a bachelor lifestyle, eating at home is appallingly wasteful. If I order delivery, I'm tossing out combo meals and unsolicited sides after paying $50+. If I shop for groceries, there are cans of soup too large for one sitting, there are canned vegetables too copious for one recipe, there are too many capers to use up before they expire, etc.
I was clearly deluded about the role of a supermarket butcher. Because when I rocked up to the counter, I saw appetizing cuts of steak and pork and swordfish, all carefully portioned for two or three servings. Now butcher shops have menus and price lists, but they do not come with a brochure, or instructions or a User Manual for the Inexperienced Householder.
So I ring the bell and a guy appears, wearing white coveralls and a hairnet and knows how to use knives. And I ask the butcher man, "could you kindly cut these swordfish steaks in half please?" And the man behind the counter attempts to demur: "oh... we aren't supposed to do that... oh, sanitary regulations... I shouldn't..."
So this is understandable, if post-processing food introduces health risks, I guess, but I stopped purchasing pre-packaged meats and freshly butchered meats, and especially no frozen meat, because the portions were made for couples and families, and regardless if the "expiration dates" were real or not, I could not stand there at home and hack apart a filet before cooking or thawing.
Passing strange, these delusions, that I thought butchers could cut meats for customers. I am seeking professional help.
- There are certainly people who are insensitive to beef prices, but a lot of people aren't. I stopped buying ground beef when it went over $10/lb at my local supermarket. Pork and chicken haven't gone up nearly as much.by laughing_man
- The amount of beef eaten per person per year in the USA is absolutely insane anyway:
USA - 37kg/capita
UK - 18kg/capita
We're not exactly shy of roast beef on this island either - the French nicknamed us "rosbifs" for a reason.
by walthamstow - According to the Economist magazine, the global problem is Chinese people eating more meat.by Schlagbohrer
- I don't remember when I first found out, but it blew my mind that sausages in the US are typically beef. Like, what? Sausages are like quintessentially pork products. Like the whole point is that you have a lot of off cuts of a cheap meat and you make sausages. Beef sausages? Yeah, that's like a step change in wealth, haha.by numbers_guy
- Animal agriculture is a key driver of climate change: https://sentientmedia.org/how-does-livestock-affect-climate-...
Along with the high price, that's one more reason to not buy it.
by markstos - All economic activity is a key driver to climate change. Why single out one thing? You're clearly imposing a self-serving moral judgement on other people.by numbers_guy
- A person eating one single hamburger uses more water than an entire year of LLM use for the same person. Yet we are very concerned about water use in data centers, but nobody cares about McDonalds.by vitaflo
- There’s research now that high density rotational grazing does the opposite.by allcentury
- In a recent Ezra Klein podcast about data center backlash he mentions being vegetarian and says something along the lines of "being anti data center because of water consumption is hypocritical if people eat meat"by dieselgate