If you believe that you have an obligation to treat your own utility as worth around 1.1x that of other peoples’, and that applying a high ratio in this regard is monstrous, that seems to straightforwardly imply that you have e.g. an obligation to give away almost all of your income, and that many common and socially accepted human behaviours (such as failure to do so) are monstrous.
I observe that there is geographic, genetic, and social discounting. So 1 personal utility is worth:
.99 wife utility
.99 child utility
.9 parent who lives nearby utility
.9 next door neighbor utility
.75 friend 100 miles away
.5 rando in same city
.1 rando 1000 miles away in same country
.01 rando in Africa
No because of the things I say in Claim 3. Like. If I were to do it alone, that would sort of be fine. But if everyone were to live that way, everyone would be miserable(something something Kant’s categorical imperative, what if everyone adopted this behaviour, would that work?).
I guess, there’s a difference between what is utility maximising for an individual to do in a given society, and what is a utility maximising way for individuals to behave in an ideal society.
Like society should be such that Claim 3 is all you need, localized responsibility + government redistribution.
If everyone donated income to everyone who needed it at least 10% more (in utility/$ terms), then the equilibrium would be a state where almost everyone gets to keep almost all their income because everyone in bad but fixable situations is now doing a lot better and there are no major utility gradients left. There would still be people who are worse off, but they’re worse off in ways that can’t be easily remedied by things that money can buy. So no, Kant doesn’t have any objections.
So if this is the requirement to be ethical, then nearly everyone in the world is unethical. Which isn’t a surprising conclusion, but it’s surprising for someone to both say “this is ethically necessary” and “no I won’t do that”.
If you believe that you have an obligation to treat your own utility as worth around 1.1x that of other peoples’, and that applying a high ratio in this regard is monstrous, that seems to straightforwardly imply that you have e.g. an obligation to give away almost all of your income, and that many common and socially accepted human behaviours (such as failure to do so) are monstrous.
Do you endorse that implication?
I observe that there is geographic, genetic, and social discounting. So 1 personal utility is worth: .99 wife utility .99 child utility .9 parent who lives nearby utility .9 next door neighbor utility .75 friend 100 miles away .5 rando in same city .1 rando 1000 miles away in same country .01 rando in Africa
No because of the things I say in Claim 3. Like. If I were to do it alone, that would sort of be fine. But if everyone were to live that way, everyone would be miserable(something something Kant’s categorical imperative, what if everyone adopted this behaviour, would that work?).
I guess, there’s a difference between what is utility maximising for an individual to do in a given society, and what is a utility maximising way for individuals to behave in an ideal society.
Like society should be such that Claim 3 is all you need, localized responsibility + government redistribution.
If everyone donated income to everyone who needed it at least 10% more (in utility/$ terms), then the equilibrium would be a state where almost everyone gets to keep almost all their income because everyone in bad but fixable situations is now doing a lot better and there are no major utility gradients left. There would still be people who are worse off, but they’re worse off in ways that can’t be easily remedied by things that money can buy. So no, Kant doesn’t have any objections.
So if this is the requirement to be ethical, then nearly everyone in the world is unethical. Which isn’t a surprising conclusion, but it’s surprising for someone to both say “this is ethically necessary” and “no I won’t do that”.