I think that Objectivists get a bad rap as being unequivocal defenders of all business., like we are some strange offshoot of neo-conservatism. Ayn Rand clearly pointed out that there are corrupt evil businessmen in this world, and she made the example with James Taggart. the problem is that because we spend so much of our time defending the producers of the world (like Microsoft and Walmart) that people try to use the bad examples of businessmen to disprove them, misleading Objectivists into having to defend trash like, say, Donald Trump, or Halliburton. Do try to remember that we Objectivists treat Businessmen objectively, meaning we acknowledge the good and the bad.
onto your next question concerning eating animals. Eating animals is moral, because animals are not volitional beings, and therefor do not possess rights. You can’t violate a a tree’s right to life, because a tree lacks a volitional rational mind. In the same way, you can’t violate an animal’s rights. Animals unfortunately are cuter than trees, so people tend to anthropomorphize them. That’s why cute but ecologically irrelevent creatures like pandas get saved, they are cute. Meanwhile Lobsters look like science fiction monsters, so it’s ok to boil them alive. Try boiling a cute puppy alive, and see how people react. the Altruists try to base rights on some archaic hierarchy of anthropormophization, thats why it’s ok to pull all the legs and wings off of a fly, but illegal to shave your dog (even though flies are far more important ecologically than dogs)
if you are having problems with vegen-nazis, I have found an easy to beat them at their own arguement. if they say eating meat is immoral, ask them then, would it be better then, if I only ate meat once a year? presumably, they’d say it would be better if you didn’t eat meat at all. Your next question is then, if they grow and eat their own food. assuming you live in the civilized world, the answer will be no. This is where you draw their flawed premise into the light. Ask them this; if it is immoral to kill an animals for the sake of sustinence, then why is it ok for them to buy food from an industry that kills millions of animals every year? Every time grains and such are harvested, millions of field mice, rabbits, and other such animals are killed. This is particularly notorious in the soy industry. If all animals have rights, as they say, then why does a cow have more rights than a field mouse? or an insect for that matter? (since pesticides kill insects by the billions.) If we were to confront them on their own utilitarian belief that the least amount of suffering must occur, then ask them what is more humane; killing and eating a single cow by punching a spike through their skull, which occurs without an ounce of pain towards the cow, or grinding and mangling mice and rabbits to death in a combine? This is the contradiction that is presented even among their own philosophy. Here is a source for this knowledge: http://www.wildlifedamagecontrol.com/anima…s/leastharm.htm
if you want a reference, here are some essays from the ARI : http://www.aynrand.org/site/News2?keywords…=true&scope=all
EDIT: your next question is our reasoning as to why animals do not have rights. Observe that animals operate on instinct, like a computer programmed to play a song on repeat over and over again. a Blue Jay bird builds it’s nest in the exact same manner as the Blue Jay that lived in 5000 BC. Ant colonies are identical to each other in terms of general construction. They are completely dependent in their ability to physically repeat these standards of livings in any homeostasis. When change occurs, these animals die off, or evolve into different creatures. Humans are not like that. Humans are the only animals that have demonstrated a capacity for reason, an ability to exist outside their own homeostasis. That’s why humans are capable of living in anything from Siberia to the Sahara desert. Humans possess very few instincts, breathing and sucking IIRC are the only ones we have. If we were to ever try to rely on our instincts, we would die. It is only the application of our reason that we are able to survive. Animals on the other hand, do not possess reason, because they rely on instincts to survive.