u/Infamous-Use7820

Hello, so this is a weird one, but I could not find another community that fit and no major news outlets seem to be reporting on this.

I have a bit of a hobby of tracking the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB)'s stats on meat purchases, partly because there seems to be a broader trend of declining per capita meat consumption in the UK which is weirdly underreported on.

Anyway since Feb 2025, beef sales seem to have dropped by 43 million kg (TBH, I'm not really sure if the data is monthly or a 52-week average, but the trend is the same regardless), which is about -7.5% (or a bit more in per-capita terms, given the UK's population has grown in that time). This might not seem like a lot, but for a year and half that's pretty massive. I don't expect that trend to continue indefinitely, but if it were to we'd stop eating beef entirely by the early 2040s. Per capita beef consumption has been declining in the UK for decades, but this seems like an acceleration.

(the chart is mine, but I pulled the data from the AHDB, their dashboard is scaled to 0 in a way that makes the trend hard to see)

(data from here: GB household beef purchases | AHDB,)

I know the answer people will give is inflation and higher beef prices, and other AHDB data (here) supports that for what kicked off the decline from Feb 2025, although it shows price rises levelling off in Aug 2025 and the decline continued after that.

There are other datasets like the ONS family food survey (here) which suggest we're generally eating less meat overall for the last few years, particularly younger people when I've been stats broken out.

What I'm really curious about is:

1. Is this trend real and will it continue?
2. What proportion of of this is driven by cost-pressures vs. younger generations making an ethical/environmental choice to avoid beef?
3. What are the practical downstream effects here? How is this effecting British land use given so much of our land is used for beef? Are restaurants reducing how beef-y their menus are?

On the AHDB website they blame it all on higher prices. But TBH, while I like their data, they seem to also act as a lobbying organisation for the UK meat industry (which is a bit suss given they seem to be a publicly funded organisation, but whatever). I don't think they'd publish analysis that said 'people don't want our product anymore'.

Annnnnyway, I'd be curious about people's experiences here? Even if you don't know anything abut the beef industry, are you personally eating less? Also, I promise I'm not a market research person, I'm just weirdly invested in this topic.

Hello, so this is a pet theory I think about a lot, and I thought this would be an interesting place to post it. I suspect that, over the very long-term (100s years) authoritarian regimes will systematically tend to drift into hereditary monarchies, and the only reason this isn't abundantly obvious is that most authoritarian regimes are relatively young (post colonial/soviet).

The idea is that it is basically a dice-roll with every authoritarian leader - if they have a minimally competent child (especially a son), and live in-office long enough that the son can establish himself, then the son will usually take-power. The same thing then happens with the third generation. After that point, most regimes will start using monarchical rhetoric (i.e. that their political legitimacy is tied to a bloodline) and monarchical norms will tend to bed-in.

North Korea is obviously the most advanced example of this. It is essentially an absolute monarchy in all but name. The political legitimacy of the Kim family is explicitly tied to the 'Mount Paektu bloodline'. Not coincidentally, it is also one of the oldest authoritarian regimes, with Kim Il-Sung's rule dating to 1948.

But it should eventually happen in most regimes given enough time - two generations of reasonably competent successors and 50+ years of continuous regime control are not high bars. Two countries are currently on second-generation dictatorships with strong prospects of a third:

• Equatorial Guinea - Nguema family - 57 years of rule, third-generation heir is a grown man (56) in political office who seems favoured to succeed his father.
• Azerbaijan - Aliyev family - 32 years of rule. Third-generation not quite as established, but then he's 28 and his father seems pretty solid in his position.

(in both cases, the third-gen is named after the first-gen, which maybe is a hint...)

In addition there are a few others which might head that way eventually (Turkmenistan, Chad, Belarus, Tajikistan). On the other hand, there is one notable recent example of this blueprint failing, although not because of succession outside the family (Assads in Syria).

If Putin had an adult son, I'm pretty sure he'd be being groomed for succession.

I'm not necessarily saying this is a good thing. All the regimes mentioned seem awful to live under, albeit stable. Although I do wonder if a transition to a monarchical system based less around repression and more around hereditary norms opens the door to less-unpleasant-but-still-undemocratic-regimes (e.g. the Gulf states).

Anyway, thoughts? Does your support for monarchism extend to these sorts of neo-monarchies? Do you think the Kims or others will outright declare themselves monarchs?

Hello, so one consistent through-line in analysis of peak oil demand is that demand for transport fuels (especially excluding jet fuel) will peak before petrochemicals. You see loads of analysis around electrification of transport, but I've seen relatively little on the petrochemicals side.

By my understanding, petrochemicals demand is massively diverse - from packaging, to clothing to oil by-products like sulphur. So the argument basically is that as the world gets richer and somewhat more populous, people will generally demand more 'stuff' and this will translate into more petrochemicals.

But this argument raises a few issues for me:

1. Most end-products have alternative supply chains which don't require crude oil as an input. Packaging can use cardboard or aluminium, clothing can use natural fibres...etc. Additionally, recycling can often provide alternative feedstocks, as can bioplastics. So additional demand for 'stuff' doesn't necessarily have to be ultimately met by more crude oil.

2. I can't really imagine high and middle income countries consuming significantly more petrochemical products per capita, and they have generally have stable or declining populations. Amongst median-income people, I can't imagine having more money would mean more food packaging, more cheap clothing, more shampoo bottles...etc. If anything, quality-over-quantity preferences seem to cut the other way. I've not really seen great analysis of what specific petrochemical product categories are meant to drive growth. I could have a massive blindspot here? Maybe demand is meant to be exclusively driven by people in low-income countries?

3. Plastics pollution seems to be a recurring headline. Even aside from the climate change element, it seems likely to me we'll continue to see political pressure on things like microplastics and ocean pollution in the 2030s, which seems likely to be a persistent headwind to plastic demand growth.

4. My understanding is that you get a variety of products from each barrel of crude oil. How does a decline in demand for fuel-products alongside stable or modest growth in petrochemicals effect the overall economics of the refining industry? My intuition tells me that in a world of significantly decreased demand for transport fuels, petrochemicals would probably have to get a bit more expensive (assuming crude prices stay stable) for it to be profitable for refiners, which would drive a pivot towards #1.

I could be massively off base! Like I've said, I've not read much analysis which thoroughly dissects the idea of rising petrochemicals demand supporting oil prices. I'm curious to know what other people think? I'd also love any referrals to reports on this topic.