Ubiquitin,
That was said regarding small, closed communities living under hostile regimes that had no concept of the rule of law and extremely restrictive tariffs . In such a society there was no choice. Today we live in a global village with free trade agreements (BTW,Sefer Chassidim says about restrictions of trade “the land was filled with hamas”) and substitutes for everything. I, in fact, know people (including myself), who do not eat bread at all (almost) on weekdays.
I would like to suggest that hey way to carry out this halacha in our time is to deregulate the economy and allow the Invisible Hand (of Hashem) to do its work.