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From: radford@calgary.UUCP (Radford Neal)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc,net.sci,talk.philosophy.misc
Subject: Re: A Modest Proposal
Message-ID: <374@vaxb.calgary.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 14-Sep-86 17:34:53 EDT
Article-I.D.: vaxb.374
Posted: Sun Sep 14 17:34:53 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 19-Sep-86 07:29:32 EDT
References: <11700375@inmet> <559@gargoyle.UUCP>
Distribution: net
Organization: U. of Calgary, Calgary, Ab.
Lines: 46
Xref: linus talk.politics.misc:190 net.sci:1247 talk.philosophy.misc:46
Summary: Ever heard of Jonathan Swift?

In article <559@gargoyle.UUCP>, carnes@gargoyle.UUCP (Richard Carnes) writes:
> [Jan Wasilewsky]
> >Oded's proposal [ easy euthenasia] is non-coercive.  But it is morally 
> >preferable even
> >compared to encouraging  voluntary population control. What are the
> >malthusians afraid of? That people may be brought into the world
> >whose life will be not worth living? Well, let *them* be the judges
> >of that.
> 
> Your view, evidently, is that a possible person is better off if he
> exists, so long as he is not so miserable as to take his own life,
> than if this possible person never comes to exist.  Well, I can quote
> Sophocles as a distinguished authority against this view.  But it is
> a very dubious one in any case.  A possible person is not a real
> person who can be better or worse off.  There is in fact no person
> until the moment the person comes into existence.  There was no
> actual Jan before Jan came into existence, there were only
> possibilities.
>
> ...
>
> >At any rate all population control advocates should  embrace  it,
> >*unless*  what  really  interests them is not overpopulation, but
> >control for control's sake. If they won't let people be born *or* die
> >without permission, then they simply want total control over you -
> >or, in equivalent words - they want to *own* you.
> 
> Even if my motives are to enslave the world and become dictator for
> life, that would be irrelevant to the philosophical and scientific
> issues we have been discussing....
>
> Richard Carnes

My guess is that Jan meant this as a satire on Carnes' utilitarian
philosophy of the greatest good for the greatest number. He points out
that any person who doesn't commit suicide must in some sense have
a positive quantity of happiness, so the utilitarian philosophy has
difficulty in saying he shouldn't have been born.

For those who don't believe Jan meant this as satire, I will point out
that effective means of suicide have never been hard to come by, so this
isn't much of a "proposal". I also note that the title of the posting,
"A Modest Proposal", was first used by Jonathan Swift in advocating 
that Irish babies be eaten.

    Radford Neal