The anti-meritocracy scenario is a third distinct one, good catch. In that scenario one would have to weigh the evilness of rich people and its likely effects on how they treat their children vs. the positive effects of greater material wealth on the children and how the goodness of poor people factors compared to their material deprivation. Also noteworthy is that in an anti-meritocracy wealth may actually corrupt due to social networks.
Overall I should emphasise that I’m not promoting the policy, but that I found it an interesting case where it seemed my moral intuitions confliced with both utilitarianism and my virtue ethics. I was more hoping to creating moral thought experiments rather than figuring out which one best describes the real world. Maybe I should have disguised “rich” and “poor” with two other groups and made the utilitarian analysis there, but then I suspect people would just outright accept the utilitarian solution proposed in each of the scenarios. At least that is the impression I got from how the community reacted to more concrete examples of dustspecks vs. torture compared to the abstract case.
Overall I should emphasise that I’m not promoting the policy, but that I found it an interesting case where it seemed my moral intuitions confliced with both utilitarianism and my virtue ethics.
Which virtues are you using for your virtue ethics?
The anti-meritocracy scenario is a third distinct one, good catch. In that scenario one would have to weigh the evilness of rich people and its likely effects on how they treat their children vs. the positive effects of greater material wealth on the children and how the goodness of poor people factors compared to their material deprivation. Also noteworthy is that in an anti-meritocracy wealth may actually corrupt due to social networks.
Overall I should emphasise that I’m not promoting the policy, but that I found it an interesting case where it seemed my moral intuitions confliced with both utilitarianism and my virtue ethics. I was more hoping to creating moral thought experiments rather than figuring out which one best describes the real world. Maybe I should have disguised “rich” and “poor” with two other groups and made the utilitarian analysis there, but then I suspect people would just outright accept the utilitarian solution proposed in each of the scenarios. At least that is the impression I got from how the community reacted to more concrete examples of dustspecks vs. torture compared to the abstract case.
Which virtues are you using for your virtue ethics?