In addition to what Linch said, another complexity here is that compensation can seem plausibly owed to people even in situations where they have not been left worse off by the original wrong. Long ago, Derek Parfit pointed out that if you significantly change the course of the future for the worse, the people who exist in the future will be different than if you hadnât. (The original example was, deplete resources, and the people who exist in the impoverished future would not have exist in the nicer future where you left sufficient resources for future people.) Therefore, as long as those people have lives worth living, the people in the future you spoiled are actually not worse off because of your bad action. They are either overall better off, because they got to have lives worth living, or neither better nor worse off, if you think you canât compare someoneâs well being in a scenario where they do exist, to their well-being in a scenario where they donât. Nonetheless, itâs still plausible that in some cases future people can be owed compensation for a wrong action that led to their worthwhile existence. I canât just say âoh, well, if I hadnât stolen that money from your Dad, heâd never have met your Mum, therefore you wouldnât exist, so I donât need to pay it back to you as his heirâ. (Why? I think at least because there is value in maintaining a system of compensation for wrongs that goes above and beyond making things intrinsically more fair, but there may be more to it than that and deontologists probably think there is more.)
In addition to what Linch said, another complexity here is that compensation can seem plausibly owed to people even in situations where they have not been left worse off by the original wrong. Long ago, Derek Parfit pointed out that if you significantly change the course of the future for the worse, the people who exist in the future will be different than if you hadnât. (The original example was, deplete resources, and the people who exist in the impoverished future would not have exist in the nicer future where you left sufficient resources for future people.) Therefore, as long as those people have lives worth living, the people in the future you spoiled are actually not worse off because of your bad action. They are either overall better off, because they got to have lives worth living, or neither better nor worse off, if you think you canât compare someoneâs well being in a scenario where they do exist, to their well-being in a scenario where they donât. Nonetheless, itâs still plausible that in some cases future people can be owed compensation for a wrong action that led to their worthwhile existence. I canât just say âoh, well, if I hadnât stolen that money from your Dad, heâd never have met your Mum, therefore you wouldnât exist, so I donât need to pay it back to you as his heirâ. (Why? I think at least because there is value in maintaining a system of compensation for wrongs that goes above and beyond making things intrinsically more fair, but there may be more to it than that and deontologists probably think there is more.)