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Here is an example of Utilitarianism.
Suppose, to save the life of a man it is necessary to cut off the hand of another man?
This seems like a simple and moral trade-off. Certainly, to save a life the sacrifice of another man's hand is reasonable. But, what if it took the hands of 10 men? What if we needed the hands of 100 men? Now things start to be a little trickier.
You might say this is an unfair example but we make these choices all the time.
How about, for 300 million Americans to have cheap gasoline 100,000 innocent Iraqis must die? Is that reasonable?
For one man to be a billionaire, one million people must live in poverty?
For one man to be healthy, one thousand people must be sick?
We make these choices every day and have no problem with trading the suffering of some for the happiness of others.

nipoleon 5 Aug 30
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And when you drink milk you are dragging terrified newborn calves from their frantic mothers, and slaughtering them.

When you eat eggs, you are imprisoning chickens in tiny crates, condemned to standing in their own filth their entire lives.

When you eat beef you are destroying the environment with pesticides and toxic waste, plus keeping the cattle in tiny pens where they can barely move.

The same for pigs when you eat bacon..

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We have no problem with it because we don't even realize it is happening. We are a frighteningly ignorant people.

For the record, there are about 40 million people living in poverty and there are 540 billionaires in the United States. That makes 74 thousand people in poverty for every billionaire.

Wish they would do something productive with the money!

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