PHLA11H3 Lecture Notes - Marginal Utility, Distributive Justice, Thalidomide
Document Summary
There is a difference between letting someone die and actively murdering them. Differences, identifiable victim, certainty of the outcome, different level of responsibility, different motivations, difficulty. different that actively murdering someone. If we can prevent something bad from happening without sacrificing anything of comparable significance, we ought to. Absolute poverty is bad, there is some of it that we could prevent by spending some of the money we spend on charities instead of luxuries. We should spend 10% of our income on charity. Objections-triage, a policy used in distributing medication in wartime. Only treat people if the difference is life and death. If we feed countires who already can"t feed everyone, there will be more people who can"t afford to eat. When quality of life goes up birth rates go down. Flip switch to kill one person or five, or push a fat person on to the track so no one but him dies.
