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    Carmelics

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    Home/Original/inverse
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    Inverse View

    It is not the case that Classic utilitarianism implies that a government should not provide free contraceptives even when the population increase causes widespread suffering, because total net utility increases with more people.

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    Reasons For

    2 perspectives
    Reason for 1 of 2
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    • 1.Classic utilitarianism, properly applied, requires maximizing aggregate welfare, which includes the severe diminishing marginal utility of resources under overpopulation.
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    • 2.When population growth reduces per-capita resources below subsistence thresholds, the aggregate utility loss to existing persons outweighs gains from adding marginally positive lives.
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    • 3.Therefore, Bentham's own hedonic calculus—accounting for intensity, duration, and extent of pleasure and pain—can mandate contraceptive provision when suffering is widespread and severe.
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    Reason for 2 of 2
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    • 1.Derek Parfit's 'Repugnant Conclusion' demonstrates that naive total utility maximization produces absurd results, motivating average utilitarianism as a rival classical framework.
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    • 2.Under average utilitarianism, adding persons whose welfare falls below the existing average lowers overall utility, making free contraceptives obligatory when new lives would be born into suffering.
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    • 3.The claim therefore misidentifies which version of classical utilitarianism is historically dominant, since Mill and Sidgwick both acknowledged qualitative distinctions that complicate simple population addition.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
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    • 1.Classic utilitarianism holds that an act is right if and only if it maximizes total utility.
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    • 2.Without free contraceptives, overcrowding brings hunger, disease, and pain, making each existing person worse off.
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    • 3.Each new person born will have enough pleasure and other goods that total net utility increases with population growth.
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