Classical utilitarianism and, more recently, longtermism, claim that the welfare of future
people has equal moral significance to that of present people, rejecting the possibility of a
temporal discount. This proposal will not discuss this claim; moreover, I endorse it.
However, I’d like to discuss and test a potential implication that can arise from it. The
reasoning is as follows: given humanity's potential longevity (in the absence of catastrophic
events), the expected number of future lives—potentially trillions over millennia—vastly
exceeds the current ~8 billion. This means that the amount of potential future welfare will
always exceed that of any living present human population. This numerical asymmetry
tends to justify strong obligations to prioritize future-oriented actions. This prioritization
grows stronger in longtermism.
This proposal explores a counterintuitive implication from placing high amounts of value
into the future: could bringing someone into existence wrong them? Before their birth, as
mere potential future people, individuals make part of a horizon of immense expected
value—a "vast territory" of aggregate welfare. Upon birth, individuals will exist in a
present defined by a comparatively smaller amount value. While the potential value of
future is virtually illimited, that of present will be necessarily constrained to the amount of
present living people. Hence, to be born means a shift from a “dimension” of higher
aggregate potential value to a “dimension” of inevitably less value. Although the intrinsic
moral status of each life remains unaltered, to be born places each new person in a
framework wherein the prevailing ethical priorities perpetually defer to the unrealized
future.
When I propose to see this as a wrong, this should not be understood as personal harm or
as a diminished personal value, but due to a relocation to a morally subordinate temporal
context. This challenges the pro-natalism stance that some of these views have: creating
lives increases the overall sum of present value, but positions these individuals in a
perpetually subordinate frame, where duties skew futureward.
Therefore, could it be possible to frame birth as a net loss in contextual value – even if no
individual has any amount of welfare prior to birth? This paradox questions whether
overvaluing the future—core to longtermism—unintentionally wrongs the living by putting
them into a secondary position.
Keywords: longtermism, value, population ethics, future people, welfare