The entertainment value of forced gladiatorial games on randomly-selected civilians… I personally would vote against them because I probably wouldn’t watch them anyway, so it would be a clear loss for me. Still, for other people voting in favor of them… I’m having trouble coming up with a really full refutation of the idea in the Least Convenient Possible World hypothetical where there’s no other way to provide gladiatorial games, but there are some obvious practical alternatives.
It seems to me that voluntary gladiatorial games where the participants understand the risks and whatnot would be just fine to a consequentialst.
It’s especially obvious if you consider the case of poor people going into the games for money. There are plenty of people currently who die because of factors relating to lack of money. If we allowed such people to voluntarily enter gladiatorial games for money, then the gladiators would be quite clearly better off.
If we ever enter a post-scarcity society but still have demand for gladiatorial games, then we can obviously ask for volunteers and get people who want the glory/social status/whatnot of it.
If for some reason that source of volunteers dried up, yet we still have massive demand, then we can have everyone who wants to watch gladiatorial games sign up for a lottery in exchange for the right to watch them, thus allowing their Rawlsian rights to be maintained while keeping the rest of the population free from worry.
I would say yes, we should re-examine it.
The entertainment value of forced gladiatorial games on randomly-selected civilians… I personally would vote against them because I probably wouldn’t watch them anyway, so it would be a clear loss for me. Still, for other people voting in favor of them… I’m having trouble coming up with a really full refutation of the idea in the Least Convenient Possible World hypothetical where there’s no other way to provide gladiatorial games, but there are some obvious practical alternatives.
It seems to me that voluntary gladiatorial games where the participants understand the risks and whatnot would be just fine to a consequentialst. It’s especially obvious if you consider the case of poor people going into the games for money. There are plenty of people currently who die because of factors relating to lack of money. If we allowed such people to voluntarily enter gladiatorial games for money, then the gladiators would be quite clearly better off. If we ever enter a post-scarcity society but still have demand for gladiatorial games, then we can obviously ask for volunteers and get people who want the glory/social status/whatnot of it.
If for some reason that source of volunteers dried up, yet we still have massive demand, then we can have everyone who wants to watch gladiatorial games sign up for a lottery in exchange for the right to watch them, thus allowing their Rawlsian rights to be maintained while keeping the rest of the population free from worry.