I can only agree with you as I was expressing a position was not my own.

In a recent September post (Painless Meat) Robin referred to the piece he had written on the subject of the ethics of meat eating.

http://hanson.gmu.edu/meat.html

Putting aside whether or not the age old philosophical debate on vegetarianism is right or wrong, I found the arguments Robin presented to be atrocious.

In short, he creates a moral premise that is devoid of circumstance, intention and consequence. Even strict economics needs to take such matters into account. I would have let it go as a fluke since he wrote it in 2002, but this problematic thinking keeps rearing itself today in posts such as this one and others on nature and population.

While I did ratchet up the rhetoric a notch to catch some attention, I didn’t stray far from his position. For the most part, I swapped out a few words and even kept much of the language structure. I didn’t even have to construct an analogy to animals since in Robin’s piece he established the good of bringing humans into existence as an unequivocal good in it’s own right.

Once you get agriculture, your kids become employees rather than liabilities quite quickly, and you need as many as you can to survive into adulthood so you can marry them off, expand your land holdings, and have someone to take care of you in your old age. Your kids may be worse, because all 9 of them only inherit your property and maybe their spouse’s, but you’re better off. The farmers getting pushed onto marginal land were likely sons that didn’t inherit much, not fathers who had too many kids.

To Nuncio:

First, we should have an unbelievably powerful norm and law against suicide. If everyone believes they’ll go straight to hell to be tortured for all eternity if they want to commit suicide, or tortured here and now if they fail, then no one will desire committing suicide, and everyone’s life will, as I understand your definition, be worth living, no matter how we abuse and enslave them. I admit the law claim may be faulty, but the hell claim seems valid.

Second, do you actually live by what you say morality dictates? If not, why not?

Third, who’s worse off when people fail to procreate? The not-born? The not born don’t exist – they don’t even not-have utility curves, they don’t even not-have anything. “People get value out of being alive” is generally true. But you can’t compare people to unpeople – “12 > (1/0)” isn’t true – it’s nonsense.

Fourth, if you take existence as a prerequisite, high-pop poor world is much, much less preferable than low-pop rich world. Everyone born into rich world will be much more excited about it than everyone born into poor world. If everyone is happier about being in rich world, how is poor world preferable? If you don’t take existence as a prerequisite, there’s no “you” to ask the question to.

Fifth, I do admit that if your terminal value is aggregate total utility, and you quantify everyone who is alive and non-suicidal as possessing positive utility by definition, the repugnant conclusion is not repugnant and is probably inescapable – assuming of course that that new life-worth-living does not negatively effect others enough to outweigh its existence. I’m assuming you value a million super-happy people over a million and one super-depressed but not quite suicidal people.