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of countless people that are now struggling with a very low standard
of living. Especially if the welfare of non-human animals is taken into
account as well, an ongoing expansion of the human and animal popu-
lation is not likely to lead to the most overall welfare. A redistribution
of resources among a stable society might be a more efficient way of
increasing overall happiness. Whether this is correct is an empirical
question. If it were so, the Total View would require just this: a redis-
tribution of resources, rather than (or in addition to) the bringing into
existence of more happy beings. In that case, the Total View would not
require that we strive for a much larger population with barely happy
people. If the idea that we are required to do just this is what makes
the Repugnant Conclusion so repugnant, and if the Total View does
not require this in the current situation, the Repugnant Conclusion is
indeed less repugnant than it seemed to be.
Defenders of the Total View have also claimed that even if the Repugnant
Conclusion follows from the Total View, it is not as repugnant as it might
seem. The Repugnant Conclusion might appear repugnant, because a large
population consisting of people whose happiness level is barely above zero
seems to be a very unattractive thing to strive for. Just in itself, a world
populated with many people whose happiness level is barely above zero
might be considered a bad thing. The underlying idea may be that this
outcome cannot be good, because everyone's welfare level is deplorably
low. Defenders of the Total View have pointed out, however, that the
population in question consists of people whose lifetime welfare is posi-
tive. They may not have much pleasure, but then they do not have much
pain either. This does not seem to be an unacceptable sort of existence.
What would probably be more realistic to assume is that those people have
happy as well as unhappy episodes in their lives, but have lives that are
more happy than unhappy. 23 Granted, 'barely above zero' means that their
lives are surely not very happy. 24 But still, their welfare is positive. Thus,
according to some defenders of the Total View, the implication called the
Repugnant Conclusion is not very repugnant after all.
Another idea of what is repugnant about the Repugnant Conclusion has
been that people should be autonomous in their reproductive decisions.
People should not be morally required to bring happy children into the
world, nor to devote their energy to other projects that maximise happi-
ness more efficiently. The underlying idea is, then, that in some domains
autonomy is more important than results in terms of welfare. Defenders
of the Total View have pointed out that this idea about the value of
autonomy is hard to combine with a utilitarian moral theory. From a
utilitarian perspective, maximising welfare is by definition the sole aim
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