For what it’s worth the sort of naive failing you describe is the version of the repugnant conclusion for negative utilitarianism. Negative preference utilitarianism addresses this, analogous to the way the repugnant conclusion of (positive) utilitarianism can be addressed by various means, although it is by no means the only option. That said Will doesn’t really address this in the post, so I’m not quite sure what he has in mind, if anything, in terms of formal population ethical reasoning.
For what it’s worth the sort of naive failing you describe is the version of the repugnant conclusion for negative utilitarianism. Negative preference utilitarianism addresses this, analogous to the way the repugnant conclusion of (positive) utilitarianism can be addressed by various means, although it is by no means the only option. That said Will doesn’t really address this in the post, so I’m not quite sure what he has in mind, if anything, in terms of formal population ethical reasoning.