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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   31623 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 9, 2023

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Cities are dynamic things. Why do you assume everyone will congregate in fewer and fewer of them? Austin was a college town before Dell and Motorola got going, there. Sun Belt cities with low taxes are attracting migrants from other U.S. metros — both people and businesses.

As the adoption of telecommuting was sped up by the pandemic, it has changed how employers weigh a city’s human and cultural capital against what a desk costs in that city. A desk in Jacksonville or Dallas costs way less than one in NYC or SF.

A potential counter to the above might be global warming if it drives people north and a bit inland.

Climate change isn't going to drive people anywhere on a timescale that matters to people living today. If anything, we are seeing a migration from northern areas to southern ones (at least in the U.S.). In terms of heating degree days, most of the northern U.S. and all of Canada is very energy intensive to live in compared to the southern U.S. This will continue to be the case for decades in the future even in worse-case scenarios. We still haven't fully realized the gains from the invention of AC, which happened in 1901.

Yes, but folks in cooler states aren’t going to consent to having their water diverted to the Southwest and southern California.

I don't this this is an issue either. Alfafa growers and dairy farmers in California might be in trouble, but there is ample water for human settlement. The biggest use is agriculture which would become much more efficient if water was priced higher.

Yes, but folks in cooler states aren’t going to consent to having their water diverted to the Southwest and southern California.

"Folks" don't have large amounts of water to divert. Agriculture uses c. 90% of the water essentially everywhere, and in the US that means large commercial agribusiness. Large businesses can be paid off - cheaply if they are using the water to irrigate low-value crops like alfalfa. Current water law in the US west mostly prohibits this type of transaction, but laws can be changed.

Why do you think alfalfa is low value? Should hay the primary input for milk and secondary input for beef and eggs be scarcer, more expensive? $7 for a dozen eggs is bad enough right now.

I didn't say anything about should, I said alfalfa was low value. A quick google says that alfalfa prices are about $240 per ton, and this is considered scandalously high with the long-term average price sub-$200. Wheat is $7.40 per bushel, which works out at about $270 per ton. Most crops worth irrigating are worth more than wheat, not less. Wikipedia says that alfalfa is 18% of California's irrigation water and 4% of the farm revenue - also consistent with low value.

I have no idea why eggs in California are $7 a dozen - it looks like they are quite a bit cheaper on the east coast. In the UK we pay about $3 a dozen, and our hens don't eat subsidised alfalfa. Does the $7 include reparations for black hens or something equally stupid?

Eggs in the US in general underwent a massive spike from a flu outbreak that wiped out a bunch of hens. The point of comparison is that minor absolute value but high percentage increases in price on common, high volume items like eggs greatly affect the day to day of consumers. Adding on to the current scarcity/pricing concerns for those items seems ill-advised to me but I'm economically insulated from it and will probably profit regardless. Alfalfa is a major hay crop for boosting productivity of dairy cows lowering the costs of milk among other uses for it in feeds. Constrain that crop and you'll have downstream effects on prices of things people care about like milk.

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