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If you're american, does it not make sense to prioritize the wellbeing of other americans over the wellbeing of irish or italians (in Ireland and Italy)? How is that racism? When you're american you are part of a community with rights and obligations, you pay taxes and expect certain rights as a citizen. That reciprocal relationship does not include irish and italians or any other nationality. And obviosly, as an american they have no responsibility to take care of you.

A corporation is never responsible for anything, those actually responsible should be punished and have these protections...

you know you sound just like them? 'lefties arguing for tolerance of their warped views only increases my intolerance for their existence'

unless you oppose the status quo (ie unless you think the Dems are rightwing, which they inmdeed are. Dressing up status quo market capitalism in LGBTI minority drag is not left).

eh, both sides are as nuts and bad as each other frankly, horseshoe theory looks better everyday.

if either side had their way authoritarianism would flourish (both sides require it to achieve their goals, one side wants to force people into the future and the other the past. they should just leave people alone)

not to mention the fact both sides have identical economics (ignoring commies and LiBeRtArIaNs)

People who think gotchas are some form of intelligence are exhausting.

Fine - it's not pain. Are you saying any creature with any kind of cognitive ability is equivalent to you? Are ants equal to pets equal to dolphins equal to humans?

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Can’t help but thinking of abortion debates and whether a blastocyst is a person.

I mean, only homo sapiens would be capable of formulating your question, or of providing an answer to it, which is the answer in and of itself

> To base morality off of arbitrary species labels is simply not intellectually supportable.

Why not? It makes more sense than pretending we base them on mental capacity, when, say, an adult crow can be significantly smarter than a month old human. We have moral obligations to humans because we are human, and because other humans can reciprocate. Other animals are not human, and cannot reciprocate, so we owe them nothing.

Are you??? Probing beliefs and asking question is a very important part of philosophy.

>Yes

Cool. Then you do agree with everything I was saying in the first place. Good talk.

>they don't feel pain.

This is why, not their lack of cognitive ability.

Ontically personhood has been and is used as a legal construct.

We can also consider personhood in a metaphysical sense.

Yes, that's between them and their government. They have no right to expect me to take responsibility for their wellbeing, just as I can't expect them to care for mine. We are not in a mutually reciprocal relationship

You're turning into some strange sort of pretzel here.

But let me try to glean the main message here: you DO understand that Australian people have rights that have nothing whatsoever to do with your personal relationship to them.

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Yeah so when you're talking about someone who doesn't yet exist, there aren't direct sacrifices, so I would reformulate what you are saying to something like this: "When choosing to reproduce, you are gambling on giving rise to a happy life at the risk of giving rise to a miserable one."

I don't know if this is exactly what you had in mind, but I suppose you could say that by making this gamble, you are making it on behalf of the person you are bringing into existence, and only they should have the moral authority to have made such an important choice. But we are happy to let parents make many decisions on behalf of their children, and don't give children any moral authority. And the non-existent can hardly make such a choice for themselves. Indeed, it is only after giving birth to and raising a child to adulthood that we give them their full rights and freedom of choice; prior to that important choices are made for them, and we find this acceptable.

An alternative approach is just to more straightforwardly argue that taking the gamble is ethically wrong because the possible bad outweighs the possible good. This is where you would do well to deploy an asymmetry argument. Check the link I sent you.

Corporations shouldn't have the same rights as natural persons, but some rights are essential for practical reasons...

Off the top of my head: due process, excessive fines, right to form contracts, right to sue and be sued, right to own property, and right to counsel come to mind. First amendment is tricky, but hopefully we agree that the government shouldn't be able to censor newspapers, publishers or book stores.

Without these rights, corporate entities (including schools and non-profits) would cease to exist, but I think we agree that corporations shouldn't have the same rights as human beings.

No and that's not what i'm arguing. I'm arguing that there is no practical responsibility for me to ensure, that strangers who I am not in a reciprocal relationship with (even as "fictional" as nationality) have the practical ability to enjoy their rights. And I don't think people are willing to accept that there even is such a theoretical responsibility.

If there was a person who does not experience any form of pain, meaning they do not suffer, by your conditions it would be justifiable to kill them.

You're missing the point. I hope.

You cannot possibly actually believe an Australian deserves fewer human rights than a French person simply because you happen to be French.

>And surely it makes no sense to place more importance on someone who lives 100miles from me rather than 1000miles.

Of course it does. If I am french I have every reason to expect to be able to enjoy the rights of a french person in the french society which provides a reasonably amount of protection from illness and crime and so on. Obviously that is contingent on me also recognizing that every other member of that community enjoys the same rights. We are in a reciprocal relationship, even if we are strangers. That same community does not include people in Australia, I can demand nothing from them and they nothing from me.

That's not the trolley problem. Here's an explanation of what that is.

The antinatalist version of the trolley problem would be whether it's permissible to impregnate someone if it led to five other people not being impregnated, or something.