The "elite": opining about things they don't understand

I'm sure you are aware of it, but in many cases, we've come to believe that just because someone has a pile of money, they've got the world all figured out and we should listen to them.

Take Bill Gates, for instance. His background and success are familiar to most. He has billions upon billions of dollars in the area in which he has some expertise. Somehow, apparently, this translates into expertise on what we should (and shouldn't) eat. And his opinion, as you might guess, is biased by his beliefs, no matter how unfounded.

I do think all rich countries should move to 100% synthetic beef. You can get used to the taste difference, and the claim is they’re going to make it taste even better over time. Eventually, that green premium is modest enough that you can sort of change the [behavior of] people or use regulation to totally shift the demand. 

 So for meat in the middle-income-and-above countries, I do think it’s possible. But it’s one of those ones where, wow, you have to track it every year and see, and the politics [are challenging]. There are all these bills that say it’s got to be called, basically, lab garbage to be sold. They don’t want us to use the beef label.

Well, of course not... because it's not beef. 

But that's not the most important part.  Just as John Kerry waved away the unemployment problems of those who worked on the Keystone pipeline (by saying they could assemble solar panels instead), Bill Gates hasn't a clue of the economic impact of his pie-in-the-shy "move to 100% synthetic beef" would entail.

It would entail a lot of misery, upheaval, and a multitude of very serious problems in other areas.

Wesley J. Smith's book,  A Rat Is a Pig Is a Dog Is a Boy: The Human Cost of the Animal Rights Movement makes the point very clear:

Today, the use of nonhuman animal products is so diverse and widespread that it is impossible to live in modern society and not support the nonhuman animal industry directly. For example, the blood of a slaughtered cow is used to manufacture plywood adhesives, fertilizer, fire extinguisher foam, and dyes. Her fat helps make plastic, tires, crayons, cosmetics, lubricants, soaps, detergents, cough syrup, contraceptive jellies and creams, ink, shaving cream, fabric softeners, synthetic rubber, jet engine lubricants, textiles, corrosion inhibitors, and metal-machining lubricants. 

Her collagen is found in pie crusts, yogurts, matches, bank notes, paper, and cardboard glue; her intestines are used in strings for musical instruments and racquets; her bones in charcoal ash for refining sugar, in ceramics, and cleaning and polishing compounds. Medical and scientific uses abound. And there is much, much more.

Of course there's "much, much more".  Just like the thousands of uses for fossil fuels that would go wanting if its production is halted.  Smith points out that a plan to do away with cattle is a plan to devastate an entire sector of our economy:

Gates’s plan would devastate rural America. Not only would those involved in the raising of beef cattle — and eventually, all meats — be driven out of business but food processors, growers of feed grain, etc. Talk about an authoritarian mindset! 

But it wouldn’t just be the lives and well-being of rural Americans. Doing away with cattle would upend major industries throughout the economy — just as destroying the petroleum industry will wreak havoc, another goal of the anti-global warmers.

I might listen to Bill Gates opine about computing or some related field. Depending on the subject, I might even consider his opinion to be "expert".  But his opinion about anything unrelated to his field of expertise is, in a word, crap. And especially given he doesn't seem to understand the impact of his plan, or, if he does, doesn't care.

McQ