Thanksgiving Day
Nov. 25th, 2021 07:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ndrosenSince I don’t have to work today, I have started reading Perilous Bounty, by Tom Philpott, which the No Strings Attached Book Club will discuss in about three more weeks. I haven’t gotten very far, but what I’ve read so far is interesting. The author talks about California producing a large share of the country’s vegetables, and the Midwest producing corn and soybeans, largely used to feed meat animals; the peril associated with this bounty is environmental degradation, with the former prairie gradually losing its rich topsoil, and the farms of the Central Valley draining the acquifer, and using up most of the snowmelt from the Sierra Nevada. Philpott writes about California’s “first in use, first in right” water rights law, which has encouraged people to start using streams or underground water sources at once, and then keep using the water themselves, even if there are better uses for it, e.g., better than growing cotton and alfalfa in a desert.
My late friend Professor Mason Gaffney, who was a Georgist and a professional economist, had things to say about this. My long-time readers will be unsurprised that there is a Georgist angle to this, and also not surprised that Georgists regard naturally available water as a form of land, and therefore something to which all people have an equal right.
As a vegetarian, I am not going to eat a traditional Thanksgiving feast, which is not what the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag ate, anyway, but I do plan on some cranberry-orange relish with my split pea and sweet potato curry.
Beyond that, if there is a God, I thank Him for what is good, though I still have questions about all the suffering and evil in the world; I hope that He will forgive my many sins, and consider me on His side. I echo Abraham Lincoln, who, asked whether he thought that God was on his side, answered, “No, but I dare to hope that I am on His.” If there is no God, then I will still, in my very imperfect way, try to do what is right.
My late friend Professor Mason Gaffney, who was a Georgist and a professional economist, had things to say about this. My long-time readers will be unsurprised that there is a Georgist angle to this, and also not surprised that Georgists regard naturally available water as a form of land, and therefore something to which all people have an equal right.
As a vegetarian, I am not going to eat a traditional Thanksgiving feast, which is not what the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag ate, anyway, but I do plan on some cranberry-orange relish with my split pea and sweet potato curry.
Beyond that, if there is a God, I thank Him for what is good, though I still have questions about all the suffering and evil in the world; I hope that He will forgive my many sins, and consider me on His side. I echo Abraham Lincoln, who, asked whether he thought that God was on his side, answered, “No, but I dare to hope that I am on His.” If there is no God, then I will still, in my very imperfect way, try to do what is right.
