One ambiguity in utilitarianism, the philosophical claim that one should act in ways that maximize utility, is the question of whether what should be maximized is the average utility of the population of the world or its total utility. The average utility criterion follows, as Harsanyi pointed out,1 from the assumption that the correct rule is the one that would be chosen in an initial situation where the chooser did not know which future life he was going to live, hence faced a lottery with an equal chance of being anyone ' the same approach later followed by Rawls to a different conclusion.2 Suppose two communities A and B to exist. Suppose that neither has any appreciable economic dependence on the other so that the disappearance of A would not appreciably affect the standard of living in B nor the disappearance of B the standard of living in A. Suppose, further, that the standard of living in B is somewhat lower than in A, though both communities are prosperous and enjoy high...
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