Bettinger’s research explores an ancient mystery: why people in pre-historic California mostly ate acorns instead of salmon. The fish was plentiful and easy to harvest, and the technology existed to dry and preserve the meat. But for some reason, societies for a long time focused on collecting acorns, which was more time consuming and less nutritious.
Bettinger argues that early societies avoided salmon because it is what he calls a “front-loaded” resource. It takes a lot of upfront work to hunt salmon and turn it into jerky; but after that, the dried salmon is easy to steal (or to freeload off your neighbor). Acorns, on the other hand, are “back-loaded.” A lot of work is needed to turn a cache of acorns into a meal. They are bothersome to steal.
Once the tribes in California became less nomadic, Bettinger and his co-author Beth Tushingham write, more and more of them turned to salmon hunting. Because they stayed in one place, they could better defend their salmon stores.
“It comes down to the ability to expropriate others’ labor,” Bettinger said. “Some resources have a lot more labor represented in them.”
In a way, agriculture is the ultimate front-loaded resource. It takes a large amount of work to till, plant and cultivate crops. So it makes sense that farming could only flourish among civilizations with a system of property rights (to prevent freeloading from neighbors) and a measure of protection against outside threats.
How the Staple food Changed Society
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The startling thing that happens to black girls in preschool – The Washington Post
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Obama’s advisers just revealed an unconventional solution to mass incarceration – The Washington Post
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Western do-gooders flood the third world to feel good about themselves
Western do-gooders need to resist the allure of ‘exotic problems’ | Global Development Professionals Network | The Guardian
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RCA Special Council Report Now Available | Reformed Church in America
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I Hope the CRC can Resist Flourishing-Moral-Order Arguments in its upcoming SSM Debate
The Evangelical Middle
One of the too many books I’m playing around with is Good Faith: Being a Christian When Society Thinks You’re Irrelevant and Extreme. It written by David Kinnaman of the Barna Group and Gabe Lyons of Q Ideas. These are two pretty foundational institutions and voices in contemporary evangelicalism.
The premise of the book is that Christians in the West feel increasingly marginalized by virtue of changes in society, most notably LGBTQ issues. In the landscape of the evangelical culture wars these two are decidedly moderate. They resist the progressives in affirming same sex marriage but resist the more right wing militancy of those more conservative. Their QPodcast on LGBTQ issues where they admonish not changing “position” but rather “posture” exemplifies the current evangelical middle ground.
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Johnny Manziel as the Lindsay Lohan of NFL Football
Lest you become too much of a moralist you should also not forget Tim Tebow.
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