I am only being slightly tongue in cheek when I say this. Hear me out before you write in the comments.
Let’s first get on the same page when defining capitalist. Here’s what we get from Merriam-Webster:
Capitalist noun
cap·i·tal·ist
1 : a person who has capital especially invested in business
industrial capitalists
broadly : a person of wealth
I’m talking in the broad term here. A person of wealth.
But let’s tease that out a little more. A vegan is someone who doesn’t use or ingest animal products to the best of their ability. This is most commonly seen in diet. A vegan eschews flesh, fish, fowl, dairy, eggs and honey.
But veganism is more than dietary choice, it is a lifestyle choice. Let’s get it from the horse’s mouth. Here’s what the Vegan Society says about veganism:
Veganism is a way of living which seeks to exclude, as far as is possible and practicable, all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose.
The Vegan Society then goes into a little more detail. Pulling from that same source:
There are many ways to embrace vegan living. Yet one thing all vegans have in common is a plant-based diet avoiding all animal foods such as meat (including fish, shellfish and insects), dairy, eggs and honey – as well as products like leather and any tested on animals.
It is becoming easier all the time to be vegan. More companies are giving up on the testing of animals for cosmetics and vegan simulated animal products like burgers, ice cream, milk-like drinks are easily attainable.
When I went vegan over 28 years ago now, I had to walk to school uphill both ways in six feet of snow, barefooted because the only shoes available were leather. I had to grind my own almonds with a mortar and pestle to make almond milk for my gruel! 😉
I joke, but it is getting easier all the time, and the great thing is it seems to me that veganism is an ethic whose time has come. Veganism, it would seem, is growing by leaps and bounds.
So why do I want vegans to become uber capitalists? Because, as a rule, we’re pretty awesome people. Most of us. And what better way for us to spread that awesomeness quickly and thickly than if we had the resources and means to spread the message and the abundant capital to do it.
Now, I consider myself independent politically speaking. I used to consider myself liberal, but current nuevos liberales have what I’d consider a fascist (Merriam-Webster: a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control) tendency in their inability to allow constructive discussion and argument. You see this with how quickly they’ll paint anyone, liberal or conservative, as a racist to quash any contrarian opinions to the liberal agenda.
But that’s not what this post is about. When it comes to social issues I generally skew left of center. And I think many within the vegan community do, though not all.
So how do you become and incredibly wealthy vegan and is it even doable?
I’d argue that it is doable and more than that, it’s important, which is the thrust of today’s topic.
Why is it important that vegans be wealthy? Because generally, we’re more externally focused than most, in that we are looking to improve the world as we see it. I became vegan for ethical reasons, which is probably the most common reason to become vegan.
But my ethics weren’t just centered on kindness and non-violence towards animals. I also wanted to minimize violence amongst humans too.
What do I mean by that? Well, for one thing, slaughterhouse workers are amongst the most vulnerable workers as well as amongst those who suffer the most injuries per capita. (Some of the links in this post might contain upsetting images.)
Many of these workers are often undocumented and earn not much more than minimum wage. Veganism is a compassionate choice towards life of all kinds, not just animals, though we are animals too.
But getting back to this point of creating vast wealth amongst vegans is not without its challenges.
The thrust of my argument for wealthy vegans is that we could do so much good with having abundant resources. So how do we go about obtaining as much capital, or wealth as possible within a vegan ethic?
The same way anyone who has become wealthy has managed to do so, by living on less than we earn and saving the rest. The Richest Man in Babylon is a great tale of how that is done. It’s also free through that link as the copyright has expired.
I’d also argue that increasing income is not a bad idea. But as vegans, we are constrained by our ethics. The current capitalistic world we live in is not very vegan, so how can we align becoming wealthy with veganism?
In my mind there are three possible ways. There are others, but the following three are, in my opinion, the best options to build the most wealth quickly.
- Real estate,
- Stocks, and
- Business ownership
Yes, there are bonds, but bonds are currently not worth considering due to their paucity of interest rates.
Real estate is not my favorite option either. Firstly, it’s not an investment strategy that I pursue and therefore I am not the best person to argue for its case.
I recognize that real estate can be a terrific way to build wealth, and it offers the best leveraging option for creating wealth. But you have to get into the market at the right time, that is, buy real estate when it is deeply discounted. If you don’t, real estate is not the best way to increase wealth quickly.
The reason for this, is that people need a place to live. Because of that, real estate, over the long term, cannot increase quicker than roughly the rate of inflation or wage growth. Why? Because if it did, pretty quickly everyone would be priced out of the market except for the richest of us.
Another great way to increase your wealth is to start and own a successful business. Tom Stanley’s The Millionaire Next Door identified this as the most common way millionaires in his research became wealthy.
Again, this is not my domain of expertise. It also has significant risk associated with it, if only because building a business is a lot of hard work and is not always a guaranteed way to success. However, I applaud those of you pursuing this option, we need more vegan operated and owned businesses.
The best way, in my opinion, for most vegans to become wealthy, or anyone really, is to own a portion of businesses through stock investing.
This is how I’m trying to save for my retirement and build my wealth. It does require a certain mental strength.
For instance, you have to be very comfortable in seeing your stocks tank every so often as happens in the stock market when it shakes free the weak hands, as they say.
But investing in stocks as a vegan has other challenges. For instance, I won’t invest in pharmaceutical companies because they test on animals. I also won’t invest in meat packing or processing companies, for obvs reasons. I also won’t invest in fast food companies whose best selling products are animal based.
I can’t offer you a comprehensive list of what companies you might want to invest in, but as an example, I am currently invested in Apple, Ford, Transocean (where I’ve so far lost my shirt), IBM amongst others.
Yes, I hear ya, Ford for example sells cars with leather seats. However, within this capitalist shitstem that we live in, there is likely no company, vegan or otherwise, that does not injure the Earth or its creatures to some small extent.
But we have to make use of the shitstem to create a more vegan and compassionate world.
If we’re unwilling to obtain great wealth, as ethically as we can, then we leave it to all the other uncaring assholes who don’t give a shit. And we give up our vote – with our dollars – to change the world.
So this is my plea. Until we can move beyond the capitalist shitstem to a more egalitarian and non-monetary based Star Trek type world, for the love of all the animals, let’s become uber capitalists so that we can push the vegan agenda of compassion with greater forcefulness and monetary backing.
Because if not us, who? If not now, when?
If this has you interested, and you’d like greater insight into how I’m investing in the stock market – and my interest earn rate is not bad – holla in the comments and I’ll do up a tutorial of some sort for your edification.
Stay kind, stay vegan, stay with us and don’t let the bastards get you down 😀