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[T]he value of relieving suffering is […] prior to the value of providing additional happiness to the well-off.

— Clark Wolf Person-Affecting Utilitarianism and Population Policy (1997)

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If people are badly off, suffering, or otherwise remediably miserable, it is not appropriate to address their ill-being by bringing more happy people into the world to counterbalance their disadvantage. We should instead improve the situation of those who are badly off.

Classical utilitarians assume [...] that pains and pleasures are commensurable so that they can balance one another out in a grand utilitarian aggregate. But it is far from obvious that pains and pleasures are commensurable in this way, and there is good reason to doubt that the twin utilitarian aims are even compatible-- at least not without further explanation.

Person-Affecting Utilitarianism and Population Policy (1997)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Clark Wolf (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.