Sean Ongley

Tag: Agriculture

  • Vegan Life with Sky Jack Morgan

    Vegan Life with Sky Jack Morgan

    Interview with vegan advocate Sky Jack Morgan

    As a counter balance to my talk with Texas Slim of the Beef Initiative, also a Bitcoin advocate, I had Sky Jack Morgan, host of the Vegan! podcast, entrepreneur, and Ethereum NFT guy. Could not be a starker contrast with Slim.

    My goal with The Not-a-Podcast Show is to talk to everyone about everything. It’s not easy getting liberals/progressives on the show. When I talk to Libertarians they tend to assume I fall in line with their thinking. There is hostility sometimes, but I find it gets real nasty with leftists.

    There was a moment when Sky equates myself to a child molester because I eat meat. He didn’t direct that at me personally, but he sees that as a moral equivalent: molesting animals in farms. I let it roll right past me, because it’s a trap argument to get caught in.

    This was a real test to see where I could find common ground. We ended the talk in good spirits and willing to keep in touch. That is success as far as I’m concerned.

    We talk about the ethics of veganism, the motives and goals, while I push back on the maximalism of that lifestyle/moral choice. It’s not that I have a problem with it or want to advocate for meat. I just think we have to live and let live and support the highest ethics of whatever our choice may be.

    As a coda, I made a 3-minute video chopping up three interviews, including this one, Slim, and Ross Farrier. It is a mashup that helps illuminate the argument and the common ground between us.

  • The Initiative of Texas Slim and his Beef with Big Industry

    The Initiative of Texas Slim and his Beef with Big Industry

    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.