Totally agree with your first point, at least. These companies spend way more to influence legislators and regulators and to try to pay less taxes. $8 million is an afterthought to them. Tyson alone had $53 billion in revenue in 2022.
You don't produce 100% of your own food though. I would assume you aren't even getting 25%.
About an acre per person for growing non grains, than another 3 to 4 per person for growing grains. About a quarter acre for processing and long term storage.
But then we have to factor in the animals. A cow eats About 16 pounds of food for every 1 pound a human eats.
No human is capable of the self sufficiency you are wanting us to believe you have.
Edit: The mods should not have removed that person's comment. They deserved to be able to respond to what I said. Only through dialog will we get these people to change.
It's kinda funny you call vegans insufferable then write so condescendingly. I'm not sure if you actually bothered to read the article you linked, or if it was just the first thing that kinda validated your feelings when you searched Google.
Let's take a second to look at some of the ingenious methodology you've linked us to:
Instead, the only research that comes close [to directly comparing cognitive function of different diets] involved the reverse. It was conducted on 555 Kenyan schoolchildren, who were fed one of three different types of soup – one with meat, one with milk, and one with oil – or no soup at all, as a snack over seven school terms. They were tested before and after, to see how their intelligence compared. Because of their economic circumstances, the majority of the children were de facto vegetarians at the start of the study.
So, the test is to feed one group soup with animal flesh, one group soup with dairy and the other soup with oil or no soup at all!
There was no effort to use foods with similar nutritional profiles to make a valid comparison, so it's already not a study of plant vs. animal based foods, it's a study of how different macronutrient profiles (or no nutrients!) affect intelligence.
This is why it's hard to take carnist seriously when they try and debate vegans. Both science and ethical consistency go against them every time.
It's funny how every carnist who wanders in here explicitly to bash vegans seems to have a BS story like this, but they also have never talked about it in any other context like a normal person might. Statistically, 99% of flesh eaters buy their flesh from the supermarket (or their mom does, as the case may be).
This reeks of old reddit "As a black man..." thinly veiled racist comments. People lying on the internet is a time honoured tradition.
So you didn't feel like you should understand the community you're participating in? Or are you so egotistical that you think you have something new to say on the topic that we haven't heard before that gives you the right to ignore the rules? Either way, ew.
Reasonable, you say? Using current technology, the world does not have enough land and fresh water for everybody to eat red meat and dairy, even in smallish quantities. If you are able to do that, it is only because others are - currently - not doing it.
Assuming you agree that it's important that we have a livable environment, then to be consistent with your own values - to be reasonable - you're going to have to argue with the facts cited above. That will be a tough climb, but you appreciate reason so we'll be here to help if you need it.