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Assuming that begging in front of a fast food restaurant isn't just a novel form of slumming, IMO this doesn't quite illustrate to what a degree those people are no longer even capable of choosing or valueing anything. That far down, it may seem psychologically unfeasible to climb up towards anything, no matter how modest. The body is degraded, the mind along with it, and they're probably all out of social contacts as well. With no resources to invest, no energy to spend, no faculties intact, nothing to offer to the market and nobody to rely on, what can you actually hope to accomplish? I think it's valid to observe that those people are no longer capable of pulling themselves up by their bootstraps. But there's a bit of a leap required to come to the conclusion that you must throw money at them.
And here I see utilitarians taking the easy way out. Has a utilitarian ever said "this person is beyond help, any resources invested here are wasted"? In my cyncical view, most utilitarians are simply humanitarians with a coat of rational paint, with many of their premises and conclusions going unexamined and only the the details getting the lightest touch of utilitarian calculus. Who questions the metrics of pain and pleasure as proxies for disutility and utility? Who quantifies them? Utilitarianism may as well just be a ritual of rationality, an act put on in order to feel better about indulging one's altruistic impulses. I'm sure I'm wrong about this and effective altruism is actually fully reasoned-out and I just don't get it, after all the people who do it are smarter than me, but I'm getting the same vibes from the so-called utilitarians that I get from those who want to help the starving poor the world over without having ever heard of utilons.
I wouldn't be surprised: that sounds like it could easily be a summary of the condition of a person who has been sentenced to be sacrificed to a bloodthirsty trolley. There are all sorts of repugnancies that utilitarianism can fall into; that's why I see it as, at the very least, something very slippery to deal with.
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