It doesn’t say “equally happy people”. It just says “happy people”. So a billion population might be living in a utopia, and then you add a trillion people who are just barely rating their life positively instead of negatively (without adversely affecting the billion in utopia), and principle 2 says that you must rate this society as better than the one in which everyone is living in utopia.
I don’t see a strong justification for this. I can see arguments for it, but they’re not at all compelling to me.
I completely disagree that “taking people away” is at all equivalent. Path-dependence matters.
It doesn’t say “equally happy people”. It just says “happy people”. So a billion population might be living in a utopia, and then you add a trillion people who are just barely rating their life positively instead of negatively (without adversely affecting the billion in utopia), and principle 2 says that you must rate this society as better than the one in which everyone is living in utopia.
I don’t see a strong justification for this. I can see arguments for it, but they’re not at all compelling to me.
I completely disagree that “taking people away” is at all equivalent. Path-dependence matters.
If you check the paper the form of welfare rankings discussed by Arrhenius’s appears to be path independent.
Sure—there are other premises in there that I disagree with as well.