Many people are quite rightly worked up these days about what Nicholas Stern called the biggest market failure ever – namely the human decisions that are leading to climate change. Not nearly as many people are worked up about the human decisions that are contributing to another global externality – namely the creation of antibiotic resistant bacteria. I am putting a section about this in the chapter on Externalities in the second edition of the Anti-Textbook.
There is a very nice article on the subject in today's New York Times. It's a case study of the difficulty of dealing with this problem because, at its root, is the usual suspect: profit maximization combined with the hamstringing of governmental regulation by corporate power, in this case the power of the livestock and poultry industries. Yes, I know, relative to the size of the economy as a whole they are a drop in the bucket, and yet (to mix metaphors) the tail wags the dog.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/04/health/pork-antibiotic-resistance-salmonella.html?te=1&nl=morning-briefing&emc=edit_nn_20190804?campaign_id=9&instance_id=11401&segment_id=15864&user_id=83d2f8e791ab7981a87da7142e1798b0®i_id=6253790620190804
The Times has produced an excellent video that tells the story in just a few minutes. Have a look:
https://www.nytimes.com/video/health/100000005932983/bacteria-antibiotics-war.html?&module=tv-carousel&action=click&pgType=Multimedia&contentPlacement=7
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