In the earlier post Moral Reasoning I noted that:

Whenever I encounter someone who makes political arguments claiming that they are based on moral arguments I know that I've entered the twilight zone where reason has no force.

It's worse than that in many ways.

Of course my affluence enables me to be concerned more about animal welfare than about obtaining sufficient calories. Isn't it fantastic that I am affluent enough to care?

Actually, she doesn't care, except in an anemic sort of way. She apparently doesn't get sufficient calories to think hard about the subject, or care deeply about large system issues.

Claiming a moral basis for clearly erroneous ideas, as if that inoculates them in some way, and so removes their errors, is immoral in my view. It is dishonest and perhaps worse.

Morality lies in doing the best you can with what you have. Given that I do have the luxury of finding delicious vegan food and non-leather shoes, I believe I have an obligation to do so. If that should change, I will go back to eating and wearing animal products without moral regret--though with a fair amount of digestive distress.

This is low morality, morality lite so to speak, in that it bounds the problem conveniently so that the difficult bits don't come into consideration. It is merely fashion, proper behavior in some cult or sub-society that separates itself from society as a whole and defines itself by its illogical, unreasonable and immoral behaviors. Fashion criminals.

This position is defended by citing Robert Nozick's argument from Anarchy, State and Utopia.

If you felt like snapping your fingers, perhaps to the beat of some music, and you knew that by some strange causal connection your snapping your fingers would cause 10,000 contented, unowned cows to die after great pain and suffering, or even painlessly and instantaneously, would it be perfectly all right to snap your fingers? Is there some reason why it would be morally wrong to do so?

In reality 10,000 contented, unowned cows will die whether you snap your fingers or not. The issue isn't whether they will die, or how they will die, it's only whether you will eat them or not. The false conceit of these sorts of arguments is the assumption that they will not die if you alter your diet. This is magical thinking, the sort of thing that is common in moral philosophy, religion, politics and other sorts of airy pursuits ungrounded in physical reality.

If some animals count for something, which animals count, how much do they count, and how can this be determined? Suppose (as I believe the evidence supports) that eating animals is not necessary for health and is not less expensive than alternate equally healthy diets available to people in the United States.

In reality life on this planet is integrated, co-dependent. You don't really get to choose. You have the illusion of choice because you shift the cost of that choice onto others. You may be able to live on only vegetation, but only because others do not. You are free riding on society.

It's like money laundering, routing your ill gotten gains through intermediaries to conceal its provenance, but then indulging in a fantasy that the money is not actually ill gotten. The crime is lost down the memory hole, we just won't think about the whole system since that would be inconvenient to our purpose.

The question is: do they, or rather does the marginal addition in them gained by eating animals rather than only nonanimals, outweigh the moral weight to be given to animals' lives and pain? Given that animals are to count for something, is the extra gain obtained by eating them rather than nonanimal products greater than the moral cost?

As noted, the givens of this question are unreal. All that can come from such questions is nonsense.

We need a more sophisticated and knowledgeable discourse on these issues. We need to think in terms of providing a global food supply. How can we do this in the least harmful way? What harms do we consider? If we use whole system thinking that does not neglect to consider environmental impacts - everything from soil degradation to atmospheric implications to biodoversity and system services - then twee debates like those above are exposed. You may be able to survive on a diet constrained by illogic, but can the planet? How many animals will die when you snap your fingers in this way? Is ignorance of the system implications of your finger snapping, or failure to snap, an adequate excuse? What moral duty to you have to educate yourself and so be able to make informed decisions? What does morality mean, in the end, when you really have no idea what you are doing or what consequences result from your blundering?

It's not about morality. When you use moral arguments to justify your ignorant acts you pollute society, introducing extraneous and false issues into what should be clear eyed analysis. Should? Is that a moral argument? Not in this case, it's just advice to the sincere thinker who wishes to make grounded decisions.