Texas Slim is a guy from Texas named Slim, not to be confused with the recording artist. He is on a tear against the establishment from the angle of beef, and he calls his crusade The Beef Initiative.
Our conversation swirls around the cow as she connects to all areas of industry and agriculture. While I do not share his enthusiasm for a meat-based diet, I do not have an issue with it because I am a meat eater, and I agree that we can steward animals in a way that is good for everyone involved.
We are domesticated ourselves. We abuse ourselves. In general, there is a lot of heart missing from our systems.
At the same time, I own a vegan fashion brand, I’m a traditional liberal from Portland, and so I absorb vegan arguments routinely, and I’m broadly familiar with the arguments surrounding industrial farming, so I was pretty enthusiastic throughout this talk.
Raising animals in the humane way can be sustainable and produce nutritious, bountiful, clean food. Getting away from mono cropping and more toward smaller farms with varieties of foods, that is the path forward, unless we want to go totally down the road of synthetic foods and centralized distribution systems, forever.
This is the main thing that vegans and farmers, libertarians and democrats should be getting behind. Of course, our social environment is set to reduce this kind of harmonious discourse.
Myself an historically left wing person now aligning more toward libertarian while continuing to have a social life with progressives and socialists has becoming quite an interesting thing for me.
I try to be the example every day of what it means to tolerate and love everyone. Not everyone sees it that way and I have to let them go.
This was a great talk and I enjoyed meeting him. Hope to do it again. We didn’t even get into Bitcoin, and that is a big part of his inititative.