George Monbiot stumbles upon a great truth

As ever, George then picks himself up and marches on, ignoring the lesson just learned:

Between 2015 and 2020, financial institutions invested $478bn (£380bn) in meat and dairy corporations. But from 2010 to 2020, only $5.9bn was invested in plant-based and other alternatives. Astonishingly, the livestock industry also receives, across the EU and US, about 1,000 times more government funding than alternative products. This includes massively more money for research and innovation, even though meat and dairy are well-established industries, while the alternatives are at the beginning of their innovation phase. Why? Because the livestock industry’s political connections are umbilical.

This is the way politics always works.

Think of housebuilding in Surrey. Those who currently live there have the vote there. They’d like their houses to remain valuable, prefer to have those rolling acres - which they don’t own - to look at. Rather than the housing that people who do not currently live in Surrey but would like to would prefer. But those who would like to live in Surrey are not a political constituency, do not have votes in Surrey. Therefore more of Surrey remains under golf courses than housing.

Politics is driven by extant political power, not by that which might arise if the current order were overturned.

Livestock farming has lips firmly on the taxpayers’ teat because it exists, has votes. Plant alternatives would obviously like some of that cream but they’re not an organised political constituency therefore they don’t get it.

Shrug. This is just how politics works. It also shows why politics is such a lousy way to actually run things. For this kowtow to extant, the existing, is true of all political systems, however democratic or elitist (it will be true of dictatorships, theocracies, was absolutely true of Soviet socialism and so on). The reason this is such a lousy way of running things is that good economic management consists, in large part, of making sure that there’s room - free market entry, a level playing field, all that - for the currently non-extant to arrive.

The only way to get around this is simply not to have politics in business. Or, as above, learn the lesson of the truth just stumbled over. Politics will always favour the extant political community but what we desire is that room for the new to arrive. So, no politics in business. And yes, no politics means no subsidies, no grants, no innovation schemes, for they will always be run by that politics and those extant interests.

Monbiot’s just proved to us why laissez-faire works. Horrifying as he himself would find that conclusion.