Do you want fries with your lab burger?

[Gez]

GreyGhost said:

So eating them constitutes self defense. Right?

Except we breed them in order to eat them, and we feed them stuff that makes them fart a lot in order to make them fatter. E.g. using antibiotics to selectively kill the least efficient bacterias in the cows' digestive tracts, so they only keep the turbocharged hyperbacteria 9000 we give them which makes them digest a lot more of the food, grow fatter, and fart more (as well as disseminate antibiotics in the wild for all bacterias to get exposed to so that they could become immune to modern medicine thanks to mutation and selection, because we miss the good old medieval plagues and wish they were back).

[geo]

The morning news had this as a topic. They said it was like $320,000 and kinda tasted like meat.

[Scripten]

geo said:

The morning news had this as a topic. They said it was like $320,000 and kinda tasted like meat.

Keep in mind that the first microwave oven cost $100,000, in 1946. New technology is always expensive when it is being developed. I'm not going to push one way or another, but I wouldn't make predictions too hastily.

[geo]

Yes all new technology costs a lot. Like those stupid ab belts. But eventually everything non consumable comes down in price. While consumables will go up.... because they're consumed.

Is meat wrong if its grown in a lab? Will vegans eat it?

[Technician]

geo said:

Yes all new technology costs a lot. Like those stupid ab belts. But eventually everything non consumable comes down in price. While consumables will go up.... because they're consumed.

I can't wrap my head around that logic.

If this meat indeed catches on, like all man-made products, it will become cheaper as production is perfected. This crop product does not rely on seasons, weather, or local politics.

A one-off product always costs more than something that is mass produced.

Is meat wrong if its grown in a lab?

Implying all of our domesticated meats hasn't spent sometime under the splicer.

Will vegans eat it?

Their numbers are irrelevant enough to not matter. This product is intended for an ever-growing human population.

[Maes]

Membrain said:

Keep in mind that the first microwave oven cost $100,000, in 1946

The first commercial example actually cost "only" US$5,000 ($51,408 in today's dollars, dunno if you adjusted for inflation) but just like the the infamous IBM CEO quote that "there's maybe a market for 4 or 5 computers in the world", you need to place the facts in context: it was a bulky device, using still nearly-classified radar technology (magnetrons...which helped win WW2), and unsurprisingly, the US State was the first user (it was installed on a state-owned experimental ship).

In any case, in the case of synth-meat, the question is if it will be more competitive with fast-breeding types of meat (insects, rodents, or even bacterial cultures). For one, we already know it's not tastier or more pretty-looking per-se, so if you are going to pump it full of artificial flavors and colors anyway, at least use the meat of a real animal as a base, even if it's rat/insects.

[geo]

Technician said:

I can't wrap my head around that logic.

If this meat indeed catches on, like all man-made products, it will become cheaper as production is perfected. This crop product does not rely on seasons, weather, or local politics.

A one-off product always costs more than something that is mass produced.

Implying all of our domesticated meats hasn't spent sometime under the splicer.

Their numbers are irrelevant enough to not matter. This product is intended for an ever-growing human population.

One off products drop in price or get better. Because once you have a car, you won't need a car for a while. Once every room in the house has a TV you don't need a TV. So to keep selling them, the price lowers. Its not like your TV will disappear every week. Some people have TVs and cars from a decade ago. In fact a study came out saying the average car on the road is now 11 years old.

Consumables like coffee, gas and even burgers will always increase in price even if ever so slightly. But that doesn't mean a cup of coffee will ever cost more than a TV. Once its gone, its gone. There are more and more people in the world with less and less land to generate these consumables.