If you’re worried about population issues, just donate $10k to bednets. That’s roughly the equivalent of two extra children existing in the world.
[assuming fertility does not fall as child mortality falls]
If you think you “owe it” to your parents, consider how unethical it is for somebody in a position of power to force an uninformed, non-consenting minor to sign a binding, life long contract.
This feels a bit like an isolated demand for rigour to me. Most people believe that ’uninformed, non-consenting minor’s do acquire obligations, for example:
To pay taxes, and support their share (as determined by the government) of the national debt.
To serve in the military in the event of conscription.
To do jury duty.
To vote, ideally in a well-informed fashion.
To save nearby drowning children in pools if it is cheap to do so.
To avoid being grossly rude to strangers for no reason.
If you are an Randian libertarian, who rejects these sorts of obligations, then it seems reasonable to also reject obligations to parents. But if you believe in any sort of non-contractual positive duty, duties to your parents should not seem weird… in fact it seems much more plausible that you might have special duties to the parents to whom you owe your life and childhood than to strangers who have done nothing for you.
But if you believe in any sort of non-contractual positive duty, duties to your parents should not seem weird
If you’re a utilitarian/consequentialist, as the vast majority of EAs are, there aren’t going to be duties to any particular entity. If you have any duty, it is to the common good (net happiness over suffering).
So in the EA community it is going to be far more common to believe we have ‘duties’ to strangers—such as those living in extreme poverty (as our resources can help them a lot) or future people (as they may be so numerous)—than we have duties to our parents who, generally, are pretty well-off.
I agree that traditional/pure/naive/act utilitarians are not going to believe in any special obligations to parents—the same way they don’t believe in special obligations to be honest, or keep promises, or be a good friend. If you object to special obligations to parents because they are ‘forc[ing] an unformed, non-consenting minor to sign a binding, life long conflict’, you should be much more averse to traditional utilitarianism, which is one of the most totalising moral philosophies. On the other hand, if you want to make modifications to utilitarianism, special treatment for family seems pretty plausible.
I think the best interpretation of the available evidence is that the impact of life-saving interventions on fertility and population growth varies by context, above all with total fertility, and is rarely greater than 1:1 [meaning that averting a death rarely causes a net drop in population]. In places where lifetime births/woman has been converging to 2 or lower, family size is largely a conscious choice, made with an ideal family size in mind, and achieved in part by access to modern contraception. In those contexts, saving one child’s life should lead parents to avert a birth they would otherwise have. The impact of mortality drops on fertility will be nearly 1:1, so population growth will hardly change.
Your examples seem disanalogous to me. The key thing here is the claim that people have a lifelong obligation to their parents. Some kind of transactional “you received a bunch of upfront benefits and now have a lifelong debt”, and worse, often a debt that’s considered impossible to discharge
This is very different from an instantaneous obligation that applies to them at a specific time, or a universal moral obligation to not do harm to an entity regardless of your relationship with them, or an ongoing obligation that is contingent on having a certain status or privileges like residency or citizenship and goes away if you give those up/is gained if you acquire those privileges. Eg, I think that many of the obligations you list would not be considered by most to be obligations if someone who grew up in country A moves to country B—this makes sense if the obligations come from ongoing benefits of residency and no sense of its repaying childhood debt.
To me, residency seems analogous to eg still living with your parents. You are choosing to be in that situation, receive benefits, and have some obligations. There’s nothing immoral about moving out, and you have fewer/no obligations afterwards.
Good comment—I agree this is a meaningful distinction, though I don’t think it cuts as strongly as you do.
Firstly, I’m not sure where you are getting ‘impossible to discharge’ from. If you borrow $100, you would typically discharge that obligation by repaying $100 (plus interest). Similarly, if you believed in natalist obligations to parents, it seems logical that an obligation created by your parents investing say 19 years in raising you, could be discharged by through similar amount of investment.
Secondly, many of the obligations I mentioned cannot easily be avoided either. Moving to another country might get you out of paying taxes in one place, but you’ll probably have to pay them in the new place—and some countries like the US will continue to tax you even if you leave! Similarly national service is often based on citizenship, not residency, and obligations like decency and pond intervention cannot be discharged (though I guess you could choose to live in a location with few ponds and very buoyant children).
It’s even the case that many people seem to view leaving, and thereby escaping from location-based obligations, as immoral—see for example brain drain criticism, or criticism of fighting-age men for fleeing their country rather than defend it.
I don’t mean to take a strong stance here defending any particular one of these obligations. My point is just that a lot of people do believe in them.
[assuming fertility does not fall as child mortality falls]
This feels a bit like an isolated demand for rigour to me. Most people believe that ’uninformed, non-consenting minor’s do acquire obligations, for example:
To pay taxes, and support their share (as determined by the government) of the national debt.
To serve in the military in the event of conscription.
To do jury duty.
To vote, ideally in a well-informed fashion.
To save nearby drowning children in pools if it is cheap to do so.
To avoid being grossly rude to strangers for no reason.
If you are an Randian libertarian, who rejects these sorts of obligations, then it seems reasonable to also reject obligations to parents. But if you believe in any sort of non-contractual positive duty, duties to your parents should not seem weird… in fact it seems much more plausible that you might have special duties to the parents to whom you owe your life and childhood than to strangers who have done nothing for you.
If you’re a utilitarian/consequentialist, as the vast majority of EAs are, there aren’t going to be duties to any particular entity. If you have any duty, it is to the common good (net happiness over suffering).
So in the EA community it is going to be far more common to believe we have ‘duties’ to strangers—such as those living in extreme poverty (as our resources can help them a lot) or future people (as they may be so numerous)—than we have duties to our parents who, generally, are pretty well-off.
I agree that traditional/pure/naive/act utilitarians are not going to believe in any special obligations to parents—the same way they don’t believe in special obligations to be honest, or keep promises, or be a good friend. If you object to special obligations to parents because they are ‘forc[ing] an unformed, non-consenting minor to sign a binding, life long conflict’, you should be much more averse to traditional utilitarianism, which is one of the most totalising moral philosophies. On the other hand, if you want to make modifications to utilitarianism, special treatment for family seems pretty plausible.
Good point. This literature review concludes the following (bold emphasis mine):
Your examples seem disanalogous to me. The key thing here is the claim that people have a lifelong obligation to their parents. Some kind of transactional “you received a bunch of upfront benefits and now have a lifelong debt”, and worse, often a debt that’s considered impossible to discharge
This is very different from an instantaneous obligation that applies to them at a specific time, or a universal moral obligation to not do harm to an entity regardless of your relationship with them, or an ongoing obligation that is contingent on having a certain status or privileges like residency or citizenship and goes away if you give those up/is gained if you acquire those privileges. Eg, I think that many of the obligations you list would not be considered by most to be obligations if someone who grew up in country A moves to country B—this makes sense if the obligations come from ongoing benefits of residency and no sense of its repaying childhood debt.
To me, residency seems analogous to eg still living with your parents. You are choosing to be in that situation, receive benefits, and have some obligations. There’s nothing immoral about moving out, and you have fewer/no obligations afterwards.
Good comment—I agree this is a meaningful distinction, though I don’t think it cuts as strongly as you do.
Firstly, I’m not sure where you are getting ‘impossible to discharge’ from. If you borrow $100, you would typically discharge that obligation by repaying $100 (plus interest). Similarly, if you believed in natalist obligations to parents, it seems logical that an obligation created by your parents investing say 19 years in raising you, could be discharged by through similar amount of investment.
Secondly, many of the obligations I mentioned cannot easily be avoided either. Moving to another country might get you out of paying taxes in one place, but you’ll probably have to pay them in the new place—and some countries like the US will continue to tax you even if you leave! Similarly national service is often based on citizenship, not residency, and obligations like decency and pond intervention cannot be discharged (though I guess you could choose to live in a location with few ponds and very buoyant children).
It’s even the case that many people seem to view leaving, and thereby escaping from location-based obligations, as immoral—see for example brain drain criticism, or criticism of fighting-age men for fleeing their country rather than defend it.
I don’t mean to take a strong stance here defending any particular one of these obligations. My point is just that a lot of people do believe in them.