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[kandrathe]

This is a problem not only in capitalist societies but in all societies in which overconsumption occurs.

Ok, so you are ready to embrace capitalism, as long as the laws protect the commons.

Most humans in the western world, and probably also in several Asian and south-American countries have diets with many times the necessary amounts of animal based protein required for a healthy life. In some, (US; the northern European countries, Canada, Australia) most people even eat so much that it affects their health (obesity, cancer, heart problems, diabetes etc.).

This is your opinion? Eating bits of red meat, fish, or poultry is actually easier for the human to metabolize (than constructing amino acids from carbohydrates), although it requires more water. Mammals can only create about half their required amino acid strands, so the remainder must be obtained from their food. The other factor is exercise, so would you mandate that too?

And, your facts are a bit shaky. "Many times"? According to the brief research into global food security, (Science) people in underdeveloped nations get as little as 80 grams of protein per day, while people in the wealthy western countries may consume as much as 400 grams / day (Denmark). The USDA RDA is about 160 grams per day. So two times does not equate to many, but it does infer that many nations could cut down on their meat consumption.

For transparency, I put myself though college by raising grade AAA prime beef cattle on our little farm. I may have mentioned this before, but I had discovered Joe Wieder's bodybuilding book to help me beef up a bit, and I applied the same principles to my cattle. The general principle is daily exercise to get muscle breakdown, and diet of moderate carbohydrates, and low fat with high availability of protein. I used vitamin/mineral enriched mixture of 50% soybean meal, 25% corn meal, and 25% oats, plus range feeding in the summer and alfalfa hay in the winter and spring. The average yearling dressed weight is about 700lb's, and mine were minimum 1200lb's and not fat either (the price was just over 1$/lb back then, now its over $2.50/lb). To teach them to lead, I'd pull them along behind the tractor and eventually they would just follow me for a daily muscle building hike while I rode on horseback. The other trick we used was to buy Hereford/Holstein crossed females who expressed the Hereford (beefy) body, but the Holstein (milk cow) udder. This way one female could easily nurse four calves. We'd purchase cheap un-weaned winter beef calves at auctions for $30 to $50 each, and raise them in a heated calving shed until they could be introduced to our calving heifers. Were we more "with it" we'd have milked the cows after the calves were weaned, over the late spring, summer and winter, and maybe made cheese. It was always a pain dealing with manually milking out the cows enough to prevent mastitis, but letting them dry out every year. A consequence of my success was that I was barred from showing my cattle at the county fair, as they were double the size of my competitors in the yearling class.

The point I am making is that our free societies just are not able to cope with these dilemmas. Even though we know that health care costs are through the roof etc. Telling someone not to eat so much that he dies of disease apparently is against their personal freedom.

Ergo, the implication is that you don't believe in freedom, or free societies. The other solution would be to burden the obese with more of their own health care costs. This is a trend I've read is occurring now, where many clinics are refusing to take patients until they reduce their weight.

Heavily taxing meat and fish (with breaks for the poor) and using the income for nature conservation, and energy research to me would be an idea.

So, the poor get to be over consuming lard butts? Now you bring in Nature Conservation... Is that your real beef? If you are against exploitation of nature, then we should push for protecting nature. It is a slightly different topic than regulating how much people eat and exercise to remain healthy.

The same for transport. In many situations people don't need (big) cars to go where they need to go but telling people to drive less is a bigger taboo than gay marriage in Saudi Arabia. You see that the market is doing something (electric cars etc) but that is just a tiny drop on a hot plate. Because negative impact on climate or environment usually is not seen directly people (the market) will never 'do the right thing' on time.

However, that person has chosen stupidly to convert their treasure into wasteful transportation. It's their problem, not yours. They paid the going rate for the expensive transportation, as opposed to the more frugal among us who would opt to be more economical. In the long run, we win and they lose. If you get government out of the vehicle industry, you'd see more equity. Ask yourself... Why do light duty trucks and vans have different CAFE standards from cars, and what impact did CAFE standards have in promoting mini vans and SUV's?

The old (current?) market economy theory says the market will finally find the best way, but I am very afraid that this will not work on the timescale that is necessary now.

But, that is due to politics and government interference, rather than free market fluidity.

And not to deny china's very big impact on the environment , nature and human rights, imagine what china and the world would be like right now when there was no 1 child policy and communism.

Well, they've created a time bomb for themselves making our baby boom look like a party popper.



That, and with gender based abortions, their gender gap will leave them with in excess of 24 million bachelors by 2020. They may not recover from this horribly engineered society. I'm really not that supportive of tyranny, suffering, and democide so no, the ends do not justify the means.