Originally Posted by schnee

See, I'm arguing a point that's a bit off compared to all this.

Living takes energy. Foraging and gathering has a very high 'energy spent -> food gained' ratio. As you move up the industrialization ladder, from domesticated animals to machine-driven factory farming, all we've done is leverage cheap sources of energy to do more work for us. Every society does this, since we're all competing for limited resources.

Being a 'gathering vegan' is great if you want to be a 100lb. Samana fleeting through a forest with nothing but rags. However, the 'hunting omnivores' will have more time and energy to stockpile a surplus, and will take what they want from you. The men will be stronger, the women will have better-fed babies, and eventually, as what happened time and time again, they'll push the gatherers out and run things.

The temptation to 'win' is far too ingrained in the human psyche to prevent that sort of competition from happening. The average girls look at the hottie with the long eyelashes and blonde hair getting all the guys, and start bleaching their hair and using makeup. The average guys look at the muscular stud getting all the girls, and start working out and wearing big cod pieces. It's stupid and vain, but that's what we are.

If the world were full of vegans, and yet some people could better their place in life by killing and eating animals, they'd do it, upset the balance, create a resource 'arms race' and destroy the Garden of Eden. That's what happened, and here we are.

Nowadays we have the machinery in order to make veganism competitive with meat eating, but that's only a result of our dependence on oil. If we didn't have that cheap source of energy, then gathering food would be incredibly time-consuming, and chucking a spear at a passing buffalo would be a cheap investment for a big bang of energy.

So, I'm not saying anything's right or wrong. I'm just saying... well... forget this, I'm gonna go ride my bike with a synthetic seat.