The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten by Julian Baggini

Author:Julian Baggini [Julian Baggini]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781847083029
Publisher: Granta & Portobello Books
Published: 2005-03-18T16:00:00+00:00

See also

1. The evil demon

28. Nightmare scenario

62. I think, therefore?

98. The experience machine

52.

More or less

Carol had decided to use a large slice of her substantial wealth to improve life in an impoverished village in southern Tanzania. However, since she had reservations about birth-control programmes, the development agency which she was working with had come up with two possible plans.

The first would involve no birth-control element. This would probably see the population of the village rise from 100 to 150 and the quality of life index, which measures subjective as well as objective factors, rise modestly from an average of 2.4 to 3.2.

The second plan did include a non-coercive birth-control programme. This would see the population remain stable at 100, but the average quality of life would rise to 4.0.

Given that only those with a quality of life ranked as 1.0 or lower consider their lives not to be worth living at all, the first plan would lead to there being more worthwhile lives than the second, whereas the second would result in fewer lives, but ones which were even more fulfilled. Which plan would make the best use of Carol’s money?

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