The repugnant conclusion just says “a sufficiently large number of lives barely worth living is preferable to a smaller number of good lives”. It says nothing about resources; e.g., it doesn’t say that the sufficiently large number can be attained by redistributing a fixed supply.
Presumably “if other things are equal” implies equal resources.
EDIT: The original statement by Parfit does not reference any resource constraint explicitly, at least his original example of A → A+ → B certainly does not seem to mention it. Neither does the conclusion that “any loss in the quality of lives in a population can be compensated for by a sufficient gain in the quantity of a population.” Disclaimer: I have not read the primary sources.
I think in the philosophy literature it’s generally interpreted as independent of resource constraints. A quick scan of the linked SEP article seems to confirm this. Apart from the question of what Parfit said, it makes a lot of sense to consider the questions of “what is good” and “what is feasible” separately. And people find the claim that sufficiently many barely-good lives are better than fewer happy lives plenty repugnant even if it has no direct implications for population policy. (In my opinion this is largely because a life barely worth living is better than they imagine.)
The repugnant conclusion just says “a sufficiently large number of lives barely worth living is preferable to a smaller number of good lives”. It says nothing about resources; e.g., it doesn’t say that the sufficiently large number can be attained by redistributing a fixed supply.
Presumably “if other things are equal” implies equal resources.
EDIT: The original statement by Parfit does not reference any resource constraint explicitly, at least his original example of A → A+ → B certainly does not seem to mention it. Neither does the conclusion that “any loss in the quality of lives in a population can be compensated for by a sufficient gain in the quantity of a population.” Disclaimer: I have not read the primary sources.
I think in the philosophy literature it’s generally interpreted as independent of resource constraints. A quick scan of the linked SEP article seems to confirm this. Apart from the question of what Parfit said, it makes a lot of sense to consider the questions of “what is good” and “what is feasible” separately. And people find the claim that sufficiently many barely-good lives are better than fewer happy lives plenty repugnant even if it has no direct implications for population policy. (In my opinion this is largely because a life barely worth living is better than they imagine.)