The great Kate Andrews of the IEA, says that whereas under socialism folks starve, capitalism ensures that all desires are met. If there is demand folks will risk capital to ensure it is met. She is, of course, right.
But that means that capital is often risked to create supplies of products that have no real purpose. GDP may be boosted when my Mrs buys her sixth handbag or when I buy yet another fury toy bear for my son Joshua but have we actually made the world a better place. The environmental impact of these extra goods can be a hidden negative.
And so we come to Sainsbury which is to launch new packaging allowing folks to empty meat straight into the cooker without touching it. This is in response to a survey showing 37% of millennials are averse to touching raw meat.
My first reaction is to bemoan yet more evidence of what pathetic bedwetters young people are. My young wife's friends reacted to vegan virtue signalling by forming a "meat club" where they would celebrate dining out eating meat. And so I asked how many of them had actually killed anything? I might as well have asked when they last had sex with a a minor such as the look of horror that greeted me.
We have created a society where folks cannot link eating meat with killing things and if they establish even a minor link they recoil in horror. For the bedwetters it is all about rights. Animals should be allowed to live forever as is their right, subsidised by evil rich farmers ( who have no rights as they are all rich thus evil and a history of sinning by killing animals to atone for, and they should have the right to eat what they like without feeling tainted.
This additional packaging is, in reality, utterly pointless and though it adds to GDP it is clearly not good for the environment and thus it is from that part of the left that the backlash has been felt today. For me such silliness is the downside of capitalism as well as a reflection on the silliness of the snowflake generation. But for all its flaws capitalism is so much better than the alternative.
As a bonus dear reader, if you want to see virtue signalling millennials suffering real butt-hurt the video below is one to watch again and again.It will never grow old.