I did enjoy this best-selling novel about Kya, a girl who grows to a woman almost entirely alone in the marshes of North Carolina. The book, by the naturalist Delia Owens, is a bildungsroman of a girl Mowgli, not raised by wolves but by herself and her sea birds, insects, and and all the teeming wildlife of the marsh.
It was a little off-putting to accept the idea of a girl of six abandoned almost completely by her family except for an abusive alcoholic father who was rarely home and eventually completely gone. So it took a bit of the willing suspension of disbelief to enter the wondrous and dangerous world of a marvelous child with only one day of school who grows in self-reliance to womanhood by her own strengths and curiosity.
There is also a murder mystery here too, not in the sense of a whodunit, but in the more classic sense of the inevitability of tragic consequences. What is so appealing in this book is how the author weaves together the characteristics of the natural world into shaping Kya’s sense of identity. What she learns in her solitary life about the natural world and natural selection is not only how she lives and prospers but how she survives and prevails. Where the Crawdads Sing, Delia Owens, 2018, Putnam’s.

The New York Times has reported today on a ProPublica study that shows that the wealthiest US individuals regularly pay little or no income tax. The NYT mentions that this has revived an interest in a wealth tax.
A few years ago, there was much excitement over the publication of Thomas Picketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Now there is a Netflix documentary which I haven’t seen yet but I did read the Picketty’s book. In record time I think, a full two and half-month for all its nearly 700 pages and I understood some of it. As a matter of fact, Picketty was careful to explain each of his formulas in plain English (translated from the French). Here is the most important one: r > g that is, the r or rate of return on capital will always be greater than g, the rate of growth of the economy which is the source of income for us 99 percenters. Some economists have criticized the book on various points (one accusing him of “mathiness” like “truthiness” using a lot of math to overwhelm the reader into thinking he must be right, it’s math after all). I take it from Nobel prizewinner Paul Krugman, that the book is one of the most important texts of our age. And of course the right-wing suggests the book is just more liberal socialism. Picketty’s book was given to me by my wonderful friend Tom, a dyspeptic but benign old Marxist professor. I think Tom was a little disappointed that Picketty’s Capital wasn’t a modern version of Das Kapital.
Of all the controversy about the book, no one has criticized his major point. Capital relies on labor to increase its value and will always increase faster than labor’s earning power causing increasing income inequality. Picketty spends a lot of time showing the negative effects of inequality including not only poverty and ill health but social upheaval and even violence. Picketty also documents generational wealth, vast fortunes passed along down the ages growing to enormous proportions. Mostly untaxed.
The solution is a wealth tax. In the US we do have one form of wealth tax, the tax on real estate, usually the only form of wealth for most Americans. Some European countries have a wealth tax on assets like holdings in a stock market.
When a significant wealth tax was implemented in France a few years ago, many of the enormously rich elites simply fled. That’s why Picketty proposes that there be an international and therefore inescapable wealth tax that is the same rate universally. Fat chance.
At any rate at least the idea is being discussed. Elizabeth Warren had proposed a wealth tax as one of her many plans, but the Biden folks have dismissed it.
I do wish people would remember when they shell out for the their real estate tax payment, that a retiring Jeff Bezos will be looking down on us all from above the skies in his space ship and just rolling in his enormous billions and paying no tax at all. Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Thomas Picketty, Harvard University Press. 2014.

Adriel won’t eat clams or fish. But the author of Animal Liberation, the utilitarian Peter Singer, eats clams but not fish. Singer (I took his remarkable class on Coursera) emphasizes the suffering of fish. The fish is not just sentient but is aware of its own existence, struggles mightily to continue to live, and most of all, obviously feels pain and can suffer physical pain and suffer from loss of life itself. It is not ethical to cause unnecessary suffering and it is unnecessary to eat fish. Despite being the foremost living utilitarian philosopher, Singer uses two Kantian ideas in his seminal book. In his ethics he espouses the “rights” of animals and also claims that animals are to be treated as ends in themselves, not as a means to our ends. Both the ideas are most associated with Immanuel Kant but Kant, who was a carnivore, viewed rational humans as having rights but not animals that could be used as serving the needs of humans. We have a duty to avoid causing pain to animals but they do not have rights equal to reasoning beings according to Kant.

On the other hand, Peter Singer sees the qualities of animals for their somewhat limited self-understanding and their avoidance of suffering as an equivalence to the same qualities in humans. Therefore animals have the same rights as us folks. But not for the poor, dumb clams. The life of a clam is not equivalent to that of me, or Sally, or even Rover. Singer says simply “I don’t think that bivalves — mussels and clams — I don’t think they can suffer, so I eat them” (Vox interview https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2020/10/27/21529060/animal-rights-philosopher-peter-singer-why-vegan-book).

So Peter Singer eats clams, and I supposed Immanuel Kant did too if they were nicely fried. But I won’t. For two reasons. First, with regard to the Kantian view, I don’t see humans as “higher” animals because of the (seldom used) ability to reason. The idea that we are something special, something spectacular, and rule the universe by reason is not acceptable to me or even to science. Current scientific research show more the amazing abilities of animals and the limits of human reason. The kind of cruelty and evil perpetrated by humans has no peer in the non-human animal kingdom. We are animals, the equals of other animals. Our rights are equivalent, not superior. Second, with regard to Singer’s emphasis on preventing suffering, I think the avoidance of causing pain is fundamental but not decisive. Rather, life itself should be the ultimate value, not just life free of suffering and not just human life. Of course, even bacteria or plants have a kind of life but so primitive and limited as to not be regarded on the level of sentient creatures. Even if a clam or an insect might not be considered “sentient” or having the ability to feel pain, a decent respect for life itself ought to cause an ethical person to avoid killing non-thinking creatures. I understand that it is sometimes necessary to kill lesser creatures, certainly dangerous animals or a deadly bacteria or virus, but it is not necessary to eat a clam or a hamburger to live. It is certainly important to kill disease bearing mosquitoes but unnecessary to kill an annoying jaybird.

Adriel follows the Buddhist hope that all sentient beings may live in peace. As I say to my friends, I am a vegetarian because I just want to live in peace with my fellow creatures on this earth. If that fly is bothering you, try to throw it outdoors. If you see a clam, let it lie. Or is it lay? Never can get that right.