Last week was a bad week for libertarianism.
Indeed, it was a bad decade for libertarianism. “No, it's been a bad century,” a devout liberal might retort, accurately enough.
Still, when the Libertarian Party excitedly announces as a guest speaker at its next convention a man who loves tariffs, resents immigration, and recently started chatting about deploying the U.S. military domestically if he's re-elected president. Things seem to be getting particularly bad.
The Libertarian Party has often been a poor servant to thoughtful libertarianism. It has always struggled to resist the temptation to ally with candidates who are actually less liberal in the hopes of gaining a broader audience. It has also always had a huge eccentric problem, which has gotten worse in recent years as the alt-right has gained influence within the organization. Inviting Donald Trump to the convention feels like the simultaneous culmination of both trends.
But last week wasn't the worst moment for libertarianism.
DeSantis' artificial meat ban is a solution in search of a problem
The worst moment came on Wednesday, when the second most popular populist in the Republican Party made his own provocative announcement. Gov. Ron DeSantis has declared that the devastation of lab-grown meat will no longer plague the Sunshine State. From now on, manufacturing or selling such items will be a bona fide crime, punishable by up to 60 days in jail.
If you want to make a living peddling meat in Florida, you're better off cutting off meat from cows, pigs, and chickens. So not only has it been a tough week for Republican liberals, but it's also been an unusually tough week for animals.
RFK Jr. can't win.But he and Cornel West could put Trump back in the White House.
I often write about populism gone too far, and Florida's new law clearly illustrates that. The policy combines with extraordinary efficiency the most odious elements of the kind of New Right politics that Mr. DeSantis has adopted to advance within the party. It is tyrannical, protectionist, deeply corrupt, and panders to the paranoia that animates much of the Republican Party's finicky base.
Amid crime, attempted coups, and general immorality, it's a good reminder that populism is scary for secular policy reasons as well.
Any conservative would have the same hunch about Florida's ridiculous law. If there are people who want to try lab-grown meat (yes, there are) and there are people who want to sell it, what right does the government have to intervene in that trade? ?
Why shouldn't residents of the “Free State of Florida” be free to participate in the “fake meat” market?
The only good answer I can think of is concerns about product safety. But that's not it. If at all, these concerns are likely to be addressed by regulating rather than criminalizing production.
Nor is DeSantis seriously claiming that lab-grown meat poses a significant public health risk. How could he, when only two companies have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration to produce the meat, and neither company has any inventory available for purchase anywhere in the United States?
Florida's law, as bad laws often do, is a solution in search of a problem.
DeSantis embraces government paternalism
I suspect the pre-Trump “Tea Party” version of DeSantis would strongly agree with all of this. The post-Trump version of populism not only sees nothing wrong with state paternalism on this issue, but also gleefully gushed about it with authoritarian bombast at Wednesday's press conference.
“Take your fake lab-grown meat elsewhere. We won't do that in Florida,” the governor yelled at one point. Another compared eating meat to eating insects and quipped, “Florida has heard enough about that.”
Individual Floridians can decide for themselves whether they have “heard enough.” Why does DeSantis Augustus feel like he has to make decisions for them?
This episode reveals the ideological fault lines between the two factions of the right. Conservatives believe that the government should override individual agencies when a compelling public interest requires the government to do so. Populists seem to believe that advancing a right-wing cultural agenda is always in a compelling interest – even when, as in this case, the particular interests in question are never a compelling one. too.
Needless to say, the populist license to act arrogant only works in one direction. If President Joe Biden signs the law passed by the Democratic Congress banning meat and declares that “we” Americans “have heard enough” about eating animals, his disdain for individual agency will increase. The New Right's outrage will erupt like Krakatoa.
DeSantis' own statements illustrate the point. His disdain for the fact that the World Economic Forum recommends eating insects to reduce carbon emissions and his indifference to his own petty authoritarianism in banning lab-grown meat. Please compare. At least WEF offers you a choice. In Florida, the governor chooses.
It would be bad enough if the “fake meat” ban was simply pointless and authoritarian, but it's also terrible economic policy. That would be terrible for Florida, and depending on how many other red states are stupid enough to follow DeSantis' lead, it could be terrible for America as well. But no matter how you slice it, it's terrible.
The worst-case scenario is that other Republicans follow Florida's lead and begin banning the production and sale of “fake meat” in their own backyards.
“This bill sends a terrible message to the investors, scientists, and entrepreneurs who have built America's global leadership in alternative proteins,” said an executive at a company that produces engineered meat. told Green Queen, a website focused on.
The fact that the U.S. is not actively producing cultured meat will not stop global competitors like China from producing it, but instead will send jobs and dollars to the U.S.
Ultimately, the country will either rely on imports to meet domestic demand, or U.S. legislative efforts to cut off global supplies will succeed, decimating a promising industry. If that happens, thank you Ron DeSantis and the Florida Legislature. The Free State of Florida, forever proud of its dynamism, will lead the way.
wait a minute. becomes terrible.
Florida's 'fake meat' ban is really an agricultural coup
Florida's “fake meat” ban is actually a grotesque and brazen case of rent-seeking lightly disguised as a culture war trap to appeal to populist suckers.
There are no nobler intentions behind the ban than to protect the state's 15,000 cattle ranchers from competitive pressures, and the DeSantis administration makes no effort to pretend otherwise.
“We must protect our great farmers and the health of American agriculture,” the Florida Agriculture Commissioner said in a news release. “Lab-grown meat is a shameful attempt to undermine our proud heritage and prosperity, and stands in direct opposition to real agriculture.”
The governor himself was clear about the protectionist intentions of the ban. “What we're defending here is against human behavior, against ideological policies that try to problematize agriculture, against ideological policies that see things like cattle farming as destroying the climate. We are here,” DeSantis said at a news conference. He reminded the audience that Florida “has one of the best livestock industries in the country.”
The exact reason why an industry should be “protected” from competitors that could create more jobs, more wealth, fewer hungry people, and a better environment is because big farms ” is unknown except for the fact that they have far more money and political influence than corporations. The same goes for the meat industry.
To understand how tough the state is for Republicans under the leadership of Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis, consider the fact that the following words came from a Democrat, not a Republican. “I don't think Florida should choose,” he said, “separating winners from losers, allowing takeovers to take place, and basically bending the law to benefit certain industries.” State Rep. Anna Eskamani spoke out in March about banning lab-grown meat.
Still, even a politician as popular and powerful as DeSantis is unlikely to sell policies to his own base unless he can find a more compelling good reason than “I'm being bought and sold by special interests.” would be difficult.
President Trump understands this, too, based on his recent comments about banning TikTok. He argued that his opposition to the new ban was because he didn't want Facebook's sleazy Big Tech progressives to profit from keeping one of its major competitors in the dark in the United States. But the likely truth about his reversal is far more mundane. The culture war is a great fig leaf for economic motives. Just ask any populist agitator with an online presence.
DeSantis' bad judgment will make him a bad president
I confess to being biased about all of this.
It doesn't mean I don't like DeSantis and his brand of politics, but I do. That doesn't mean I love animals and would really like to see fewer animals killed for dinner. However, it is also true.
I live in Texas so I'm biased. And novel technologies, traditionally championed by the left and derided by the right, are keeping me and other Texans alive.
Hate Texas?Get over it. Why do so many people move to the Lone Star State?
If this state's power grid goes down during this hellish summer, many people will die. The heat is indescribable, routinely exceeding 100 degrees for months on end. And with Americans moving here in droves every year, the probability of a power grid failure theoretically increases. As the population grows, the demand for electricity increases and the stress on the power grid increases.
But that hasn't happened yet. And the reason that hasn't happened is because green energy, namely wind and solar, is meeting the increased demand and even meeting some of it.
Texas, America's quintessential red state, is now one of the nation's most powerful producers of wind and solar energy. The surge in production kept the power grid stable last summer as the state thawed out in unrelenting heat and electricity demand hit record levels.
If Texas Republicans treat green energy the way Mr. DeSantis treats “fake meat” and demagogue it on populist grounds as some kind of hippie cultural insult to “tradition” etc. If we had, the state would have been uninhabitable for months each year. Because they didn't, Texas is a powerhouse in every sense of the word.
Lab-grown meat won't dramatically change lives right away, but all useful technologies start at an early stage. Florida's governor would rather lock down modern policies for political gain than give them room to compete.
It's the kind of bad judgment that makes him a bad president, and should be held against him, along with many other things, when he runs again in 2028. Conservatives can do better.
Nick Catoggio writes The Dispatch's Boiling Frogs newsletter, where this column first appeared.
