$0.15 for cruelty (divide by 1%, multiply by 0.4%, to reflect the true fraction of beef consumption represented by big macs)
$0.27 for environmental damages (divide by 1%, multiply by 0.4%)
$0.28 for direct subsidies to the meat industry (divide by 1%, multiply by 0.4%)
$0.51 for health costs ($71B cost of red meat consumption per year, multiply by 0.4% fraction of red meat attributable to big macs, divide by 550 million big macs sold per year.)
For a total negative-social-externalities-per-big-mac of $1.21?
Of course, some of these estimates might swing wildly depending on key assumptions...
the “cruelty” number might go to zero for people who just subjectively say “I don’t care about animal cruelty”, or might go much higher for EAs who would bid much higher amounts than the average american in a hypothetical utility-auction to end cruel farming practices.
I’m a bit suspicious of the environmental damages number being potentially exaggerated. For example, the “devaluation of real property” seems like it isn’t a negative externality, but rather should be fully internalized by farmers managing their own land and setting the prices of their products. (Unless they are talking about the devaluation of other people’s land, eg by the smell of manure wafting over to a neighboring suburb?)
As Gerald mentions, maybe the healthcare costs are actually negative if red meat is causing people to die younger and more cheaply. But it might be best to calculate a QALY metric, valuing lives at $50K per year or whatever is the standard EA number—this might make the healthcare cost even much larger than the $0.51 per big mac that appears based on healthcare costs.
Personally, I love the idea of trying to tax/subsidize things to account for social externalities. But of course the trouble is finding some way to assess those externalities which is fair and not subject to endless distortion from political pressure, ideological fads, etc. (For more on the practical difficulties of theoretically-perfect Pigouvian taxation , see this post by economist Bryan Caplan.) So I’d be happy to see more discussion of this Big Mac question; I’d encourage you to make a cross-post to the EA Forum!
I do think that’s better, but my guess is if one of us got the book and looked at how they calculated their totals we’d be pretty unimpressed and not see them as worth building on.
Big Macs are 0.4% of beef consumption specifically, rather than:
All animal farming, weighted by cruelty
All animal food production, weighted by environmental impact
The meat and dairy industries, weighted by amount of government subsidy
Red meat, weighted by health impact
...respectively.
The health impact of red meat is certainly dominated by beef, and the environmental impact of all animal food might be as well, but my impression is that beef accounts for a small fraction of the cruelty of animal farming (of course, this is subjective) and probably not a majority of meat and dairy government subsidies.
Doesn’t make sense to use the particular consumer’s preferencces to estimate the cruelty cost. If that’s how we define the cruelty cost it then the buyer should already be taking it into account when making their purchasing decision, so it’s not an exernality.
The externality comes from the animals themselves having interests which the consumers aren’t considering
We should definitely not expect the “true fraction of beef consumption” to be proportional to impact. Steaks are consumed basically the same way as they were before subsidies (though in much larger quantity); they don’t respond much to the subsidy to take advantage of it. Fast food isn’t restricted to being prepared or sourced in a particular traditional way and therefore will change itself to best exploit subsidy. Estimating that effect as a 2.5x multiplier seems like a perfectly good conservative approximation, so you should just stick with 1%.
So, perhaps a better statistic might be:
$0.15 for cruelty (divide by 1%, multiply by 0.4%, to reflect the true fraction of beef consumption represented by big macs)
$0.27 for environmental damages (divide by 1%, multiply by 0.4%)
$0.28 for direct subsidies to the meat industry (divide by 1%, multiply by 0.4%)
$0.51 for health costs ($71B cost of red meat consumption per year, multiply by 0.4% fraction of red meat attributable to big macs, divide by 550 million big macs sold per year.)
For a total negative-social-externalities-per-big-mac of $1.21?
Of course, some of these estimates might swing wildly depending on key assumptions...
the “cruelty” number might go to zero for people who just subjectively say “I don’t care about animal cruelty”, or might go much higher for EAs who would bid much higher amounts than the average american in a hypothetical utility-auction to end cruel farming practices.
I’m a bit suspicious of the environmental damages number being potentially exaggerated. For example, the “devaluation of real property” seems like it isn’t a negative externality, but rather should be fully internalized by farmers managing their own land and setting the prices of their products. (Unless they are talking about the devaluation of other people’s land, eg by the smell of manure wafting over to a neighboring suburb?)
As Gerald mentions, maybe the healthcare costs are actually negative if red meat is causing people to die younger and more cheaply. But it might be best to calculate a QALY metric, valuing lives at $50K per year or whatever is the standard EA number—this might make the healthcare cost even much larger than the $0.51 per big mac that appears based on healthcare costs.
Personally, I love the idea of trying to tax/subsidize things to account for social externalities. But of course the trouble is finding some way to assess those externalities which is fair and not subject to endless distortion from political pressure, ideological fads, etc. (For more on the practical difficulties of theoretically-perfect Pigouvian taxation , see this post by economist Bryan Caplan.) So I’d be happy to see more discussion of this Big Mac question; I’d encourage you to make a cross-post to the EA Forum!
I do think that’s better, but my guess is if one of us got the book and looked at how they calculated their totals we’d be pretty unimpressed and not see them as worth building on.
Big Macs are 0.4% of beef consumption specifically, rather than:
All animal farming, weighted by cruelty
All animal food production, weighted by environmental impact
The meat and dairy industries, weighted by amount of government subsidy
Red meat, weighted by health impact
...respectively.
The health impact of red meat is certainly dominated by beef, and the environmental impact of all animal food might be as well, but my impression is that beef accounts for a small fraction of the cruelty of animal farming (of course, this is subjective) and probably not a majority of meat and dairy government subsidies.
Doesn’t make sense to use the particular consumer’s preferencces to estimate the cruelty cost. If that’s how we define the cruelty cost it then the buyer should already be taking it into account when making their purchasing decision, so it’s not an exernality.
The externality comes from the animals themselves having interests which the consumers aren’t considering
The issue is that there might be no objective way to compare an animal’s interests to a human’s interests.
We should definitely not expect the “true fraction of beef consumption” to be proportional to impact. Steaks are consumed basically the same way as they were before subsidies (though in much larger quantity); they don’t respond much to the subsidy to take advantage of it. Fast food isn’t restricted to being prepared or sourced in a particular traditional way and therefore will change itself to best exploit subsidy. Estimating that effect as a 2.5x multiplier seems like a perfectly good conservative approximation, so you should just stick with 1%.