But there are ten thousand middle class families, and just one poor family? Among those ten thousand, what about the chance that the money e.g. provides necessary funds to:
Send their children to Ivy League schools.
Provide necessary treatment for debilitating illnesses.
Pay off debt.
Otherwise drastically improve their quality of life?
Good points I admit to have not considered. I live in a country where health care and instruction can be afforded by middle class families and as I have already written I assumed that their economical situation was stable. If we consider this factors then my answer will change.
Even if they have stable economic condition, I still expect any sensible utilitarian calculation to prefer helping 10,000 middle class families as opposed to one poor family. How exactly did you calculate helping one poor family as better?
As I tried to express in my post, I think that here are different “levels of life quality”. For me, people in the lower levels, have the priority. I adopt utilitarianism only when I have to choose what is better in the same level.
The post’s purpose wasn’t to convince someone that my values are right. I only want to show throught some examples that, even though some limits are nebulous, we can agree that things that are very distant from the edge can be associated to two different layer.
I only want to add that switching from one level to another has the highest value. So saving people who are fine is still important, because dying would make them fall from a level X to 0.
But there are ten thousand middle class families, and just one poor family? Among those ten thousand, what about the chance that the money e.g. provides necessary funds to:
Send their children to Ivy League schools.
Provide necessary treatment for debilitating illnesses.
Pay off debt.
Otherwise drastically improve their quality of life?
Good points I admit to have not considered. I live in a country where health care and instruction can be afforded by middle class families and as I have already written I assumed that their economical situation was stable. If we consider this factors then my answer will change.
Even if they have stable economic condition, I still expect any sensible utilitarian calculation to prefer helping 10,000 middle class families as opposed to one poor family. How exactly did you calculate helping one poor family as better?
As I tried to express in my post, I think that here are different “levels of life quality”. For me, people in the lower levels, have the priority. I adopt utilitarianism only when I have to choose what is better in the same level.
The post’s purpose wasn’t to convince someone that my values are right. I only want to show throught some examples that, even though some limits are nebulous, we can agree that things that are very distant from the edge can be associated to two different layer.
I only want to add that switching from one level to another has the highest value. So saving people who are fine is still important, because dying would make them fall from a level X to 0.