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Fair enough, I suppose I just usually associate veganism with utilitarianism on some level.
I guess I'll just phrase it as a full argument:
A. Animals suffer greatly in their natural environment. Nature and evolution have optimized for survival, not happiness.
B. Artificial environments can make concessions to animal happiness that Nature cannot make.
C. If you care about animal welfare, artificial environments that make some attempt at keeping animals happy are to be preferred over natural environments.
D. If you think artificial environments are not a net positive for animals, then natural environments are definitely not a net positive.
E. Thus if you think we should get rid of artificial environments for animals in order to alleviate their suffering, then we should also get rid of natural environments for animals to alleviate their suffering.
I believe that is the encapsulated argument that @MaximumCuddles has been getting at. Vegan's don't seem to reach point E in the argument. The logic is sound, so one of the points must not be valid from the perspective of a vegan. The question is: which points do they think aren't valid? That would narrow down a large moral argument to a specific point of contention.
I am not a vegan, but C is where things start to go off the rails. Factory farms are optimized for profit, not happiness - they do not make concessions to reduce animal suffering except where it starts to impact the bottom line. There is no reason to think that factory farms are better than nature in this respect.
By the time we get to E the argument is fully nonsensical. The claim that we should not actively cause harm that wouldn't exist otherwise should not be construed to mean that we must go and eliminate all harm everywhere, even harm that has nothing to do with us.
A serial killer whose defense is "well in the state of nature these people probably would have been killed anyway" is just as deranged. You remain accountable for your actions regardless of what's going on elsewhere or in other hypothetical situations.
And there are things that impact the bottom line that mean better welfare for the animals. Animals that die in a high stress way do not taste as good. Animals that are starving do not taste good. Animals are not butchered while they are still alive because it can be done better and more efficiently when they are dead. Animals that are sick have lower quality meat. Injured animals can at times be nursed back to health rather than being put down. For larger animals like cows and pigs, safe pregnancies result in lower chances of miscarriage and death at birth. Minor birth defects that might impair movement are not an immediate death sentence. None of these are amenities that Nature provides.
There is a small jump there, but not really when it comes to reality. Think about something like the Amazon rain forest. There are three land uses: farming, ranching, and leaving alone (nature). Many vegans I've spoken with would order their preferences as (nature) > farming > ranching. But my claim is that they should have preferences of farming > ranching > (nature).
Its not that Vegans need to embark on a project to eliminate all nature. Its just that anytime nature is about to be destroyed for some other use, vegans should be happy. None of this is hypothetical, these are the actual land use debates that happen all the time. There have been at least two centuries of these debates in the United States. And some of the earliest recorded conflicts in history have had a similar theme of farmers vs ranchers vs hunter gatherers. Typically most of history is just farmers vs ranchers (China vs Mongolia), but the 20th century saw the first introduction of people that wished to return things to (nature).
I'm very confused why you keep seeing this as a purely hypothetical question. What do you think happens to ranch land if all the farm animals go away? Usually the land used for ranching isn't great for farming in the first place. Its more likely to just go back to a wild state of nature. Or is it that Vegans actually getting their way is completely hypothetical, so we need not consider the actual implications of their policies?
Nature doesn't maximize suffering either. What's your point?
I'm glad you brought up sick animals because that reminded me that organic livestock cannot be given antibiotics. That would affect the bottom line, you see.
This is not unlike atheists telling Christians what they should believe. Vegans in my experience are first and foremost concerned with the effects of human actions.
I am similarly confused why this simple point is not coming through. You don't get to harm one group of animals just because otherwise another group of animals would be harmed through some other mechanism that has nothing to do with you.
I simply do not care about what's going on in nature.
Nature is neutral toward suffering. Eating animals for meat is slightly against suffering.
I'm not sure why things have to be organic?
I happen to agree with the atheists pretty often. If you say your bible is sacred and its word is to be taken literally, and your book says to stone adulterers, why aren't you stoning adulterers? This seems fine to me to point out logical contradictions in other people's beliefs.
Going back to the Amazon Rain Forest. Human action is required no matter what. Even "leaving it as is" requires human action in the form of enforcement. Its cut down the trees and plant crops, cut down the trees and graze animals, or shoot trespassers trying to cut down the trees. The same thing happened in the US, the formation of US national parks on the east coast often first involved evicting people that lived there.
Humans are a dominant species on this planet. In the West, if an area is left underutilized by humans, it is often by human choice.
It does have to do with us though. Nature needs that land. Ranchers need that land. Farmers need that land. You take raw land and you mix it with a thing, and you either wind up with a vegan approved diet or suffering animals. Torture planet isn't across the galaxy doing its thing without our input. No its like they are next door and we are shipping them food to keep the humans alive so they can continually be tortured. We could deny the torture machine resources!
I very much understand this perspective. There are no humans in nature, and so I generally don't care about the suffering taking place in Nature either. But you also said are not a vegan, and you also haven't proclaimed to care about the suffering of animals as a reason for being vegan. My point is not addressed to you. It is addressed to vegans who claim to be vegan because they care about the suffering of animals. I can't imagine a vegan walking along a path in the forest when a fawn falls off a ledge and breaks its legs in front of the vegan, the vegan steps over its trembling body with a smile on their face and say "well at least the suffering is only happening from nature's hands!" Where as if the fawn had jumped off the ledge after being scared by a human the vegan would instead cry out in horror and rush to save the animal.
I take most Vegans at their word that they genuinely care about the suffering of animals. I don't think they carve out exceptions for how the suffering was caused. I'm not likely to ask one next time I meet them in person, just like I don't go up to Christrians and ask "how do you feel about all your non-christian friends going to hell". There was one Vegan in this thread, but I think they left after getting a bit piled on.
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