HL CHAPTER 3 The Government Authority Argument for Special Immunity

CHAPTER 3 The Government Authority Argument for Special Immunity
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There is a widespread view that governments, or at least democratic governments, have a special moral status.
Note:LA PIÙ OVVIA OBIEZIONE

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Therefore, while it is permissible to attack an evil-doing terrorist, it is not permissible to attack an evil-doing president,
Note:PRESIDENTE TERRORISTA

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THE CONCEPTS OF AUTHORITY AND LEGITIMACY
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1. Virtuous Vani believes Americans are becoming too fat. She arrives at a 7-Eleven store brandishing a gun and declares, “From now one, no one may purchase Big Gulps.
Note:PRIMO CASO IL SALUTOSTA

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2. Principled Peter believes Americans should not live high while other people die. He believes that we are all in this together.
Note:SECONDO CASO IL REDISTRIBZIONISTA

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3. Decent Dani believes Americans should support one another and prioritize each others’ welfare over that of foreigners.
Note:PRIMA GLI ITALIANI

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4. Enterprising Elon believes space exploration is a vital project. Accordingly, he builds elaborate and expensive satellites, probes, telescopes, and shuttles, and then sends each American a small bill,
Note:IL CASO DELLE COMPAGNIE DI BANDIERA

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If Vani, Peter, Dani, or Elon were to do these things, we would probably call the police and demand that they be arrested.
Note:TUTTI E QUATTRO AL MANICOMIO

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While we think Vani’s, Peter’s, Dani’s, and Elon’s actions are criminal, our own governments do these same things.
Note:PUZZLE

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permission to create and enforce rules
Note:LEGITTIMITÀ

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ability to create in others a moral obligation
Note:AUTORITÀ

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Authority is the power that could make it impermissible for you to refuse to pay your taxes.
Note:TANTO X INTENDERSI

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In contrast, most people who believe in government authority believe it can create additional grounds of obligation when it issues commands, edicts, laws, and so on.
Note:SE DALLA PIAZZA GRIDO...NN UCCIDETEVI L UN L ALTRO...NN ISTITUISCO UN DOVERE....X IL FORMALISTA SI CREA UN DOVERE AGGIUNTIVO

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For instance, suppose there is no independent moral obligation to avoid drinking absinthe. But now suppose the government authoritatively forbids me from drinking it.
Note:CREARE UN DOVERE DAL NULLA

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DISPUTED QUESTIONS ABOUT LEGITIMACY AND AUTHORITY
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1. What determines whether a government has legitimacy or not?
Note:DOMANDONA

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1. What determines whether a government has authority or not?
Note:ALTRA DOMANDONA

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LEGITIMACY AND AUTHORITY ARE INDEPENDENT PROPERTIES
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a government (or any other rule-making entity) could have one without the other.
Note:LEGITTIMITÀ AUTORITÀ

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imagine a theory of authority called “pacifist monarchism.” This hypothetical political theory holds that we are each duty bound to obey our queen. This theory forbids all violence and coercion, though. The queen may not coerce people into following her commands. She may not employ a military or police force. She may not use violence even to stop others from acting violently. This hypothetical political theory holds that the queen is authoritative but not legitimate.
Note:ESEMPIO...MONARCHI PACIFISYA

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it’s coherent to hold that a government might have moral permission to stand and create laws, even if no citizens have the duty to obey or defer to that government.
Note:ESEMPIO ROVESCIATO

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governments may permissibly tax citizens, but still hold that citizens have no duty to comply and could feel free to engage in tax evasion if they can get away with it. A view like this might be mistaken, but it’s not incoherent.4
Note:ESEMPIO

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THE IRRELEVANCE OF GOVERNMENT LEGITIMACY For
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The Super-Duper Democratic Legitimacy Thesis
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A democratic electorate may legitimately do whatever it damn well pleases. It may even implement horrifically unjust policies.
Note:DEMOCRATICISMO

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The reason I can grant that democratic governments may legitimately do as they please, without thereby undermining the moral parity thesis, is that once we distinguish correctly between authority and legitimacy, it turns out legitimacy has little bearing on whether it’s permissible to resist government.
Note:IL TRUCCO DI SEPARARES LEGITTIMITÀ DA AUTORITÀ

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Legitimacy and authority are independent properties, and a government could conceivably have one but lack the other.
Note:LA LEVA X AVERE UN GOVERNO E ANCHE UNO STANDARD MORALE

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One way to illustrate this is to think of a boxing match. In a boxing match, both boxers have permission to punch each other.
Note:BOXING MATCH

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GOVERNMENTS PROBABLY DON’T HAVE ANY AUTHORITY, PERIOD
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Democratic legitimacy does not do the work that the defender of special immunity needs it to do. Instead, what may be of use in defending the special immunity thesis is that moral power I call authority.
Note:L ILLUSIONE CHE BASTI LA LEGITTIMITÀ

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John Simmons’s
Note:AUTORE

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certain governments have legitimacy (as I’ve defined it) but not authority.
Note:LA VISION DOMINANTE OGGI

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Michael Huemer similarly concludes, “Skepticism about political obligation [i.e., authority] is probably the dominant view” in philosophy now.
Note:MH

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Leslie Green says in his Stanford Encyclopedia
Note:ALTRO AUTORE

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Ned Dobos
Note:ALTRO AUTORE

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To review this literature would take an entire book.
Note:ORMAI LA LETTERATURA NEGAZIONISTA È STERMINATA

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ACTUAL CONSENT THEORY
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governments have authority over us because we consent to their rule.
Note:UNA TEORIA POPOLARE

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The problem with this theory, though, is that our relationship to government does not appear to have any features that signify consent.
Note:PROBLEMA

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I performed an act that signified my consent.
Note:RFEQUISITI DEL CONTRATTO

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I was not forced to buy
Note:SECONDO REQUISITO

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Active dissent would have stopped the deal.
Note:TERZO

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HYPOTHETICAL CONSENT THEORY
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many philosophers, such as Thomas Hobbes, have proposed “hypothetical consent theories,”
Note:HOBBES

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we generally only think hypothetical consent matters in cases when we cannot check to see whether a person actually consents.
Note:PRIMO PROBLEMA

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hypothetical consent theories at best usually seem to show only that it would be unreasonable or irrational for you not to agree; they do not demonstrate that it is obligatory.
Note:SECONDO PROBLEMA

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they seem to misunderstand what promises, real or hypothetical, can do.
Note:TERZ PROBLEMA....NN POSSO COMMETTERE IL MALE IN VIRTÙ DI UNA PROMESSA...CONTRATTO IMMORALE

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Suppose I declare, “In exchange for my parents having provided me with benefits, I promise to obey them in all things.” Now suppose my parents order me to murder some foreigners or throw their pot-smoking neighbors in the basement. Even though I did in fact promise to obey my parents, it’s clear I don’t acquire the duty to murder the foreigners or imprison the neighbors.
Note:ESEMPIO DI PROMESSA CHE SI HA IL DOVERE DI NN MANTENERE

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FAIR PLAY THEORY
Note:TtttttttttDILEMMA DEL PRIGIOIERO....FORMA DI UTILITARISMO

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Another major theory of authority, devised by H. L. A. Hart, holds that authority arises out of a duty of fair play:
Note:ALTRA TEORIA

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The idea here is that when some people incur a sacrifice to public goods that benefit all, the other people who benefit have a duty to contribute
Note:DOVERE DI CONTRIBUIRE

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Robert Nozick illustrates one with his “public address system” thought experiment. He asks you to imagine that your neighbors create a public entertainment system, with loudspeakers throughout your neighborhood. Each neighbor takes turns playing songs, reciting poetry, conducting interviews, or whatnot. You enjoy the system. One day, let’s say day 138, they come to you and say that it’s your turn
Note:PRIMO PROBLEMA DEI CONTRATTI ROVESCIATI....FARE E PRETENDERE ANZICHÈ CONTRATTARE....IL DONO X OBBLIGARE DI FATTO PRIVILEGIA IL TUO CONTRATTO PRFERITO SUL MIO...È UNA VESSAZIONE

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the reason for this judgment seems to be that you had no good way of avoiding receiving the benefits—you couldn’t opt out without great expense
Note:RISPONDERAI CHE NN INTENDI CONTRACCAMBIARE

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SUMMARY
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The belief that governments enjoy authority is widespread; even people living under illiberal and highly corrupt regimes tend to think their governments are legitimate and authoritative.
Note:NONOSTANTE I FALLIMENTI TEORICI

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over the past twenty-five hundred years, a large number of highly qualified people have spent a large amount of effort trying but failing to identify that property.
Note:COSA RENDE AUTOREVOLE UN GOVERNO?

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Empirical work generally finds we have a psychological bias to ascribe authority to others, even in cases where there clearly isn’t any.
Note:VOGLIA DI UBBIDIRE

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AUTHORITY ISN’T ALL OR NOTHING
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A government can have authority over some issues without having complete authority over everything.
Note:QUELLO CHE SFUGGE

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Authority in one does not imply authority in another.
Note:LIMTI

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Anyone who wants to defend the special immunity thesis on the basis of government authority has a serious burden. It won’t be enough to justify a general kind of government authority.
Note:IL COMPITO DEL DOPIO STANDRD

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THE COMPETENCE PRINCIPLE AS AN OBJECTION TO AUTHORITY
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one of the arguments for the special immunity thesis holds that governments enjoy special immunity because they have legitimacy and authority.16 So far we’ve seen that legitimacy is irrelevant. What matters is whether governments have authority. Yet we’ve seen that even with this clarification, the assertion faces some big challenges. First, it’s unclear that any governments have any authority, period.
Note:RIASSUNTO

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Second, even if governments have some general authority—for example, the authority to make you pay taxes—a person who tries to ground the special immunity thesis on authority would need to show that governments specifically have the authority to commit severe injustices or impose serious harms.
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Suppose six criminal defendants are about to stand trial for first-degree murder. If they are found guilty, they will face many years or even life in prison,
Note:ESEMPIO

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The first jury is ignorant.
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The second jury is irrational.
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The third jury is impaired.
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The fourth jury is reckless.
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The fifth jury is prejudiced.
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The sixth jury is corrupt.
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Ask yourself: If we knew that the juries made their decisions that way, would we be obligated to obey them? (Would
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juries have strong duties toward defendants or to the rest of us on whose behalf they act, and also that the jury’s legitimacy and authority depends on its discharging these duties.
Note:IPOTESI

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The four features above are grounds for accepting what I call the competence principle:
Note:IL NOSTRO DIRITTO ALLA COMPETENZA DI CHI CI GOVERNA

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The competence principle appears to have a broad scope of application. There is little reason to think it applies only to juries. If a police officer, judge, politician, bureaucracy, or legislative body makes capricious, reckless, irrational, or malicious decisions, other people generally are stuck bearing high costs.
Note:IL PRINCIPIO CHE DÀ AUTORITÀ

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The competence principle is, in itself, not a full theory of authority or legitimacy. Rather, as I’m arguing, it’s a principle that should be part of a full theory, whatever the best theory of authority or legitimacy may be.
Note:EPISTEMOCRAZIA

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The competence principle is a disqualifier. It does not justify imbuing anyone with power. It does not justify holding that any governments (or their agents) are authoritative or legitimate. Rather, it maintains that certain people, bodies, actions, or decisions lack authority and
Note:DISQUALIFER

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In each of these cases, it’s reasonable for Ann to believe not merely that what the wrongdoers are doing is unjust but that they are also acting incompetently or in bad faith.
Note:TORNIAMO A CASI DELL ANN DEL CAPITOLO PRECEDENTE

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DOES THIS TRIVIALIZE THE MORAL PARITY THESIS?
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First, even if we grant that governments may legitimately do whatever they please, strictly speaking this leaves open what we may do in response.
Note:PRIMO PROB DELLA LEGITTIMITÀ

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Second, if we take seriously the past twenty-five hundred years of work on government authority, it’s reasonable to think that no governments have authority in general.
Note:L AUTORITÀ È PIÙ DIFFOCILE DA RICONOSCERE

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Third, even if we ignore that and presume charitably that governments have some general kind of authority, in order to defend the special Immunity thesis, one would need to show specifically that governments have the authority to commit severe injustices
Note:AUTORITÀ LIMITATA

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Fourth, the competence principle gives us reason to think many government injustices lack authority. At most, governments could be authoritative in committing a severe injustice only if they somehow decided to commit that injustice competently and in good faith.
IL LIMITE DELLA COMPEYENZA

L'egoismo di chi non fa figli

L’egoismo di chi non fa figli

People Wanted – Fair Play: What Your Child Can Teach You About Economics, Values and the Meaning of Life – Steven E. Landsburg

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 Trigger warning: – tanti bimbi tanti cervelli – il motore della prosperità – circolo virtuoso – il ruolo della domanda – rivoluzione industriale – il limite della crescita – i torti di malthus – inquinamento al contrario – l’inconcepito e le generazioni future –

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TED BAXTER, THE ANCHORMAN ON THE old Mary Tyler Moore show, planned to have six children in hopes that one of them would grow up to solve the world’s population problem. …People solve problems, and when there are more people, more problems get solved. …

Note:TANTI BIMBI… TANTI CERVELLI

each generation free rides on the inventiveness of its ancestors.

Note:PERCHÈ SIAMO RICCHISIMI?

The engine of prosperity is technological progress—not just feats of engineering but also the design of new insurance contracts, better legal systems, and improved patterns of crop rotation.

Note:IL MOTORE DELLA PROSPERITÀ

Ideas come from people. The more people, the more ideas.

Note:IL MOTTO

population growth drives technological progress, technological progress drives economic growth,

Note:KREMER: UN MILIONE DI ANNI DI STORIA UMANA

a world with twice as many people will have twice as many natural-born geniuses.

Note:L‘ASSUNTO DI KREMER

the same reason that the biggest high schools usually have the best football teams.

Note:FOOTBALL TEAM

geniuses tend to inspire each other,

Note:CIRCOLO VIRTUOSO

a larger population means a larger market for inventions,

Note:PIÙ DOMANDA… DI IDEE

Industrial Revolution—and the massive ongoing growth spurt that it triggered—had to wait until world markets grew big enough to reward large scale innovation by entrepreneurs.

Note:RIVOLUZIONE INDUSTRIALE… TEORIA RICHMOND

In the first century A.D., Julius Frontinus wrote that “Inventions reached their limit long ago, and I see no hope for further development.”

Note:PRONOSTICI SUI LIMITI DELLA CRESCITA

One hundred years ago, the average workweek was over sixty hours; today it’s under forty. One hundred years ago, only 6% of manufacturing workers took vacations; today it’s 90%. …One hundred years ago, the average housekeeper spent twelve hours a day on laundry, cooking, cleaning and sewing; today it’s about four hours. …

Note:PROGRESSI

The average middle-class American might have a smaller measured income than the European monarchs of the Middle Ages, but that does not prevent the American from leading a more luxurious lifestyle.

Note:UNA QUALITÀ DA RE… IL REDDITO NON È TUTTO

A skeptic could easily point to countries where large populations coexist with abysmal economic conditions.2 But without exception, those are countries where the natural advantages of population size—a larger pool of geniuses and an abundance of trading partners—are undercut by government policies

Note:SOVRAPOPOLAZIONE

A large population brings many blessings besides prosperity. …We value our children for reasons that have little to do with their earning capacity. …

Note:OLTRE LA RICCHEZZA

A world with more people is a world with more diversity. Chamber music, parasailing, and Ethiopian restaurants can survive only where the population is large enough to support them.

Note:DIVERSITÀ

Parents who love their children face a tradeoff: The more children you have, the less you can give to each of them. Reasonable people disagree about how to resolve that tradeoff. Some find poverty an acceptable price to pay for a large family; others prefer fewer children with a higher living standard. That’s not a conflict that needs to be resolved; it’s an opportunity to celebrate diversity.

Note:NESSUNA ESTERNALITÁ TRA FAMIGLIE… MALTHUS HA TORTO ANCHE IN CONDIZIONI STATICHE

They’re unlikely to have overlooked many costs, because the costs are concentrated in your own family:

Note:I GENITORI CHE HANNO DECISO LA VOSTRA NASCITA

The benefits are more diffuse. The clearest benefit of your birth is that it brought your parents much joy; they didn’t overlook that one. But the remaining benefits are spread far and wide.

Note:I BENEFICI SONO PIÙ DIFFUSI

When a decision maker is more conscious of costs than of benefits, he tends to make decisions that are overly conservative.

Note:TROPPO POCHI FIGLI

Population growth is like pollution in reverse.

Note:INQUINAMENTO AL CONTRARIO

Somewhere there is a young lady whose life has been impoverished by my failure to sire the son who would someday sweep her off her feet.

Note:I DANNEGGIATI INCONSAPEVOLI

In other words, I was being selfish when I limited the size of my family. I understand selfishness. But I can’t understand encouraging others to be selfish,

Note:EGOISMO

A second, completely separate, argument says I should have had more children for the sake of those children themselves.

Note:GIFT OF LIFE

Do living people have any moral obligation to the trillions of potential people who will never have the opportunity to live unless we conceive them? …if the answer is not yes, then it’s no, and if the answer is no, then it seems there can be no moral objection to our trashing the entire earth, to the point where there will be no future generations. …

Note:I DIRITTI DEL NON CONCEPITO

to admit that we’re incapable of being logically rigorous about issues involving the unconceived.

Note:PROBLEMA IRRESOLUBILE

Surely you know couples like this: They already have two children, and they’re undecided about whether to have a third. They waver back and forth; they lean one way and then the other; they weigh the pros and they weigh the cons. Finally they decide to go ahead. And from the instant that third child is born, the parents love it so deeply that they’d gladly sacrifice all their assets to preserve its life.

Note:NON CI SI PENTE DI AVERE UN BAMBINO IN PIÙ

equivalent of an addictive drug. People hesitate about whether to try heroin; once they’ve decided to try it, they become addicted and can’t give it up.

Note:BAMBINI COME UNA DROGA

Parents know in advance, and with near certainty, that they will be addicted to their children. …parents know in advance, with near certainty, that they won’t want to break their addiction. …

Note:DIFFERENZA

I know that my unconceived children would be my most valuable “possessions”

Note:PARADOSSO

Economist Peter Bauer has pointed out that if per capita income is the right measure of human happiness, then the birth of a farm animal is a blessing and the birth of a child is a curse.

Note:LA MALEDIZIONE DELLA NASCITA

Other people—our friends and our children and sometimes even strangers who do us unexpected kindnesses—are among the luxuries that make life worth living.

IL NOSTRO LUSSO