The Economics for Vegans of Animal Agricultural Subsidies

I would like to make a brief overview of the economics of subsidies, mostly from the position of the person who doesn't consume the products that subsidies are alleged to benefit, but first, to quickly mention the ethical issues of forcing those who are opposed to animal agriculture (vegans) to fund the deed, I will give libertarian thought to the morality of the issue. For example purposes, lets call veganism a "religion", not just a dietary preference. (I do, in fact, think it is simply a dietary preference and do not include this into my libertarianism, that all libertarians should be vegans. And actually, as I'll describe below, I do think the reverse is true: all vegans should be anarchists.)

I believe this "religious preference", as it's fair to call it, can be applied to any operation of government to find it immoral on its face: whether the military and the pacifist; the abortion clinic and the Christian; and of course the vegan and the subsidization of things they wish not to consume. The list goes on. It is not an excuse to get out of paying taxes, but indeed one's right to claim that it's against their personal morals to fund anything they don't want to. I may state i'm morally opposed to funding public schools, and so shouldn't be forced to; etc.

It is for this reason, along with the fact that so-called "ethical vegans" who are vegan for moral purposes, i.e., they believe animals have the human right to non-aggression (whether this is legally true or not, and I tend to not think so), should be anarchists. If they hold animals have a right to non-aggression, which libertarians might say is relative to humans, but which they're certainly free to personally practice, then they cannot turn around and enslave man by championing the State as its nature rests on aggression. Socialist vegans are hypocrites. I don't think libertarian meat-eaters are, in contrast.

Subsidies are a forced transfer of property from producers of income (taxpayers) to non-contractual owners of said property (the farmers, etc.) in the name of increasing "social utility" for whatever is being provided. These policies have changed over time, from direct payments to insurance, but nonetheless government assistance is being provided. Sure, maybe meat-eaters benefit from the subsidies in cheaper, more available meat; but the vegans most certainly do not. However, this is doubtful too since the market is not free to operate, and taxpayers and consumers everywhere are experiencing a waste in resources. Indeed, prices of many of the products could be artificially high, not low. The point is that, without a free market, we don't know. True consumer preferences are not being expressed in production, but capital is diverted to where government encourages it by means of subsidy. There is no free price system, or free discovery of profit and loss, and so allocations of resources are not in accordance with consumer's most urgent and highest-valued preferences. Profits are made unnaturally and losses are protected from occurring.

If the subsidies were ended, and the tax dollars returned, it's possible it would become less profitable to engage in such production, and there would therefore be less production of animal-related economic goods (meat, cheese, milk) as these farmers no longer received government-protection. There would be less capital goods put toward these industries, and it would be diverted to places where consumers demanded it the most. Being protected from losses, however, there's no incentive for them to improve the quality of their products. Business becomes stagnant, lacking in innovation. Staying in business is not dependent upon continuously satisfying consumers, but in successfully appealing to the government for other people's property as tax-recipients.

Thus, being stolen from by way of taxation, we're forced to give up what we value the most (our money in our pocket) from something we don't value whatever (meat). There is no decreased price at which dedicated vegans as myself will purchase animal products. Not free, not even if you pay them. Vegans, if not everyone, surely don't benefit economically; and morally they carry the guilt of supporting the production of products they otherwise wouldn't. Vegans, as taxpayers, in effect cannot even use the form of protesting they desire against the animal agricultural industry: the boycott.

As a libertarian, I believe we essentially have the boycott and persuasion of others as our means of ending the slaughter and enslavement of animals, and, at this time, disagree that no one has a legal right to kill animals for consumption (I think they do, and that stopping them would in fact be the violation of property rights, i.e., the crime), but another likely effect, of prime importance, is that the prices of many these goods would rise (perhaps steaks would double in price) and prohibit the amount able to be demanded today, at lower prices. There would, upon falling supplies, be a decreased consumption of these goods due to affordability. Naturally, the free market might create more vegetarians than under the non-free market of government subsidy as higher prices force people away from meat into alternative foods. But since a change in demand (in our case, away from meat) is not accompanied by a shift in capital (again, away from the production of animal products), resources are being wasted producing things that aren't of the highest-value, as they would be in the free market.

In the free market, if prices rise along with demand or upon a falling supply, then this encourages production in this now-profitable area, adding to the supply and bringing prices back down again. If prices fall with a falling demand, and yet producers are subsidized to earn money in the name of protecting their prices, then there may become a surplus in the supply and production of these goods, and there is no incentive then to get out of producing these things. While a rising price will make it more profitable to produce in that line of production, and create incentive to shift production to that line, away from others, there will still be resources bound-up in other, less-valued or unneeded areas of production with the subsidies.

Production under these subsidies then is not compatible with true consumer demand, which the rationale the government assumes is that everyone benefits from meat, and should be helped by providing it more-cheaply. Obviously, vegans are not. The real reason, however, is that lobbyists have been successful at acquiring redistributed property for themselves. This is typical in all regulated industries, in this case the USDA, where the people supposedly being regulated are the special interests that run the regulatory agencies.

The farm subsidies are not for "us", but just another government plundering of resources toward inefficient uses, as all government spending must be. Assume, for a quick example of thought, that the newspaper industry was subsidized upon on the entry of the Internet, into a time where most people now consume their media digitally. Surely this must be regarded as a waste of paper-resources, and a misuse of taxpayer money (as all uses are): less people than before demand newspapers, instead having a preference for online news. Or for another case, what if the typewriter were subsidized while being replaced by the keyboard and the computer?; or, the floppy disc with the advent of the CD; pagers, landlines, or payphones upon the introduction of the mobile phone; etc. Obviously, it would be a waste of resources to divert capital to the production of something that people now value less than they did before. Don't they care that surely more people are vegan than ever before? Of course not.

Subsidies, then, are static and assume that subjective valuations in the market never change; that it's always good to keep a subsidy going for a given industry; and that there is no evolution or innovation occurring and so it's safe to continue supporting the use of resources in now-primitive lines of production.

This might explain the shortcomings of the market in meat and dairy alternatives, which seem to have lagged behind the apparent demand for them evident by the amount of those getting away from such products. In my early vegan days, around 2006, the substitutes for omnivorous diets were not anything they are today, a decade later. There was little selection of alternative milks; nothing to be found of a good non-dairy cheese; few meatless options, limited really to Boca burgers and Morningstar Farm's products. It took Ben and Jerry's 15-years into the 21st century to develop an ice-cream, etc. Now, today, the vegan options are plentiful, not to say anything of the fact that fruits and such don't receive subsidies.

In short, the market did seem to lag the trend of the rise in popularity of vegetarian and vegan diets. I could be wrong, but I don't believe it was wholly because of a lack of anticipation by entrepreneurs, but more so the increased costs (relative to non-vegan products) associated with making them. This might be a thesis worth exploring, which I here do not have the time for. It's safe to assume though that subsidies are a waste of resources, and of no benefit to the vegan if for anyone.