Mainstream veganism attempts to remove all animal exploitation from their daily use/consumption as possible, whereas an 'Economic Vegan' is less interested in striving for purity since true purity is impossible while choosing to live in modern society, such as the animal bones used to build the roads that outline our cities and countless other examples that simply cannot be avoided if one does not wish to live in the woods picking nuts and berries and growing their own food. Instead, the focus is placed on the VERY SPECIFIC GOAL of reducing the demand for products that 'directly contribute' to the overwhelming profit incentives that leads to the unnecessary enslavement, torture, and murder of animals. Exceptions unfortunately exist, such as for bees that pollinate the food supply, without which our current agricultural system could not function so their enslavement is considered 'necessary' for the time being, perhaps in the future when agriculture no longer needs bee's in order to meet our populations demand, boycotting food that was grown with the assistance of bee pollination could be legitimate. However to call the life of a honey bee in our system ‘enslavement’ is hard to justify when compared to the life of a dairy cow, if humans were not omnivores and were instead carnivores, then the enslavement of cows for the purposes of agriculture would be considered 'necessary' and so would not be an ethical dilemma, however since humans are omnivores there isn't a necessity which is why there is a ethical dilemma when consuming cows. Normal mainstream veganism achieves the goals of reducing the demand for products that 'directly contribute' to the overwhelming profit incentives of animal agriculture by default, but as I will argue below, is taken to purity seeking levels that go beyond this main focus of economics, which I believe is partially causing the enormous amount of anxiety and hesitation to try a lifestyle shift the general public seems to have, possibly due to the perceived standards that may seem too extremist, which wouldn't be necessary for the goals of Animal Activism. Obviously its important to support our vegan retailers that advertise as being a vegan option and should always be deferred to when possible in order to support our vegan base, in case this isn't self-evident.
[Note: It should be mentioned upfront that I believe there are situations where Economic Vegans consume what I will later define as the primary animal resources like meat. An example of a situation would be when that individual doesn't have the money to purchase a vegan option and doesn't know where to find or access to free vegan options and is dependent on the offerings/ choices of non-vegans. In this scenario, it would still be ideal for the vegan to try to defer to whatever they could to minimize as much demand as possible, however the realities of nutritional and energy requirements will cause some compromises. Another example would be when disgusting psychopathic people who have an extraordinary amount of influence on your diet and who like to fuck with you because you are a vegan, such as when you are in a particularly non-caring/non-reflective family or if you live in a totalized environment like prison or the military, having to survive in a non-vegan world is not your fault.]
The fundamental thought with this way of thinking is being able to make a distinction between the different resources available for purchase since the incentives they provide a producer to continue the cycle are not equally distributed, which is primarily assessed through profit. For example, eggs and beef return a level of profit sufficiently different to cow bones, pig eyes or whatever "secondary resources" that would be categorized differently, not through the spiritual lens of an Animal Activist, but by the capitalist responsible for providing those products. Many secondary resources would have been discarded to landfills if there hadn't been a use found in the wide variety of products that only require a few trace elements to produce the desired function. "Primary Resources" are those resources such as meat, milk, and eggs which are responsible for well over the majority of profits.
So the assumption goes, if primary resources were no longer providing their incentives to producers, there wouldn't be enough of a profitable return from the remaining secondary resources to motivate producers to continue the cycle, as in there would be sufficient motivation to halt animal agriculture altogether due to the financial costs of housing, feeding, transporting, processing, disposing of excess parts, as well as what is sacrificed as far as what all that land, equipment and other resources could be put towards including their resale value, would outstrip the profits they currently receive. If secondary resources were still attractive enough for producers to come up with non-animal alternatives after animal agriculture disappeared, then the profits would have to justify the research and development of those alternatives if they don't already exist but cannot compete economically with a resource that would have been discarded in a landfill anyways, otherwise if there wasn't enough of an incentive, secondary resources would disappear without a direct boycott.
If a product would produce enough of a monetary return to justify all of those expenses (housing, feeding, transporting, etc.) then it would be classified under the 'Primary Animal Resources' categories. A technique that is simple enough to understand for yourself of how a resource should be classified is to run a thought experiment where you wave a magic wand causing the entire world to develop a repulsion to whatever you have already classified as a primary resource (I chose to start with meat, milk and eggs) and see if the the product in question would still justify the costs to produce the product from animals. An example would be leather clothing; when I run that simulation in my mind, I come up with the answer, Yes, I believe in a world where humanity has a magically induced repulsion to meat, milk and eggs, cows would still be enslaved and slaughtered for their skin for humans to wear due to the level of demand/profits that currently exists (my answer could be different from yours and perhaps I am wrong, if I am please tell me why you think so). Next you update your list of primary resources: meat, milk, eggs, leather... and then run the simulation again for another product in question, such as going to the circus that has animals perform tricks for humans... Then repeat the process, etc.
Life as an Economic Vegan is about a constant process of analysis and reflection of the specific choices in life with updates to new information, though as certain brand products are found to meet the requirements, less and less is needed to process for the daily routines in life. I know we live in an omnivore world and so I want to be sure that anybody who is reading this and is not vegan knows that I did not intend to insult them, though they might have taken offense anyways... perhaps assuming that I look at them as if they were immoral sociopaths or something like that, which couldn't be further from the truth. One of the advantages of being introduced to multiple highly intelligent philosophers who each hold conflicting opinions on the same subject is that you can understand what its like to hold someone in a very high regard, knowing that they have a lot of value to contribute to your understanding of the world and yet be able to disagree on very specific data points while not rejecting the whole of their argument or the value they offer in other domains. I would also like to say that for the first 20 years of my life, I never felt the need to examine my dietary choices even though I knew of the existence of Vegans, however once I was exposed to the arguments presented to me by a Vegan Philosopher I felt compelled to make the switch. A small hope in the back of my mind for any non-vegans exposed to this text would be for those of you who are feeling bold, to have been inspired to go explore some more and to know that if you decide to not go vegan, but gave it an honest consideration, I STILL LOVE YOU. I hope to get feedback on these ideas and look for my upcoming post on the Animal Rights vs Animal Welfare debate. Thank you for your time.
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