If you could be a God...

There don't need to be any conscious entities getting to choose between life and death (even if you allowed them a fair and open choice, which you aren't in favour of doing). I've never said anything about what non-existent people feel - point out an example where I've done so. I've only discussed what they don't feel, which is that they don't feel deprivation (and of course nor do they feel happiness, but that isn't a problem as they don't have any need for happiness). And for the countless time, I've never claimed that there is such a thing as an imposition on a non-existent person, let alone argued that it was important. Only the imposition that manifests at the same time as consciousness is what I care about. There's no philosophical validity to the idea that future suffering is unimportant because the future sufferers don't yet exist. It makes no sense.



I haven't used the term 'sanctity' in relation to you being allowed to choose to continue your own existence, as you see fit. Merely in relation to the fact that you're in favour of heavy handed government interference in other people's choices concerning whether they perceive there to be sufficient value in continuing to exist and why people who would prefer not to continue to exist shouldn't be allowed to access any means of suicide they desire, so long as it doesn't infringe on anyone else's rights. You claim that such people would be being 'harmed' in some way, but you can't describe any dimensions to this harm (the duration of the harm nor the intensity of the feeling of harm); so the only thing that is really being harmed (blasphemed against, I would aver) is your belief that human life is sacred and therefore nobody except for those who are very soon to die anyway due to terminal illness should be supported in formally disavowing the value of that life. There is no secular framework wherein your thinking is defensible, because there would need to be some kind of intangible value to human life that firstly supercedes the individual's own stated desires, and secondly justifies the cost of validating that value in the form of suffering that will continue to be experienced by the person who would be denied access to clinical assistance in dying.

What is your evidence that your standard of living would rise if slavery and exploitation no longer existed (thereby causing the price of consumer goods and services to rise significantly)?



Well, as dealt with above, you aren't in favour of allowing people a fair and open choice with regards to the continuation of existence. Whether you will admit to it or not (and you won't, because you refuse to acknowledge any evidence that doesn't support your tendentious assertions), the lack of access to assisted dying and also the coercive nature of suicide prevention does act as a formidable barrier to people being able to choose to reject existence. Someone like Jack Kevorkian (a highly intelligent doctor) couldn't even figure out to conveniently carry out suicide in a painless and risk free way, and wanted clinical means for others and for himself to make death easier. 

I am in favour of allowing people an open and fair choice to live their lives how they see fit, just so long as that doesn't involve an imposition upon someone else who could not consent. Consent is not a coherent concept for non-existing people, so therefore they cannot consent. If the actions that you are taking impact someone else in a way that are likely to cause them significant risk and harm, and you aren't doing it for the sake of their wellbeing (which they don't have, given that they don't exist), then ethically you should not be making that decision. You can't be making that decision on behalf of the person who does not exist, because there is no person that you're saving from an undesirable experience. Therefore you can only be making that decision based on your own needs and wants, not on their needs and wants.

Need isn't an issue, desire isn't an issue, being saved from some kind of undesirable state isn't an issue. The only 'issue' is that you wanted it, so you were going to gamble with the wellbeing of other people in order to get it.

An open, free and fair choice is one where there aren't legal restrictions in choosing the way that you want to, as long as you aren't infringing on someone else's rights in doing so. Where the police don't burst in and raid old ladies houses because they are suspected to have ordered Nembutal (please tell me what would be your justification for doing this and why she shouldn't be perfectly entitled to have that substance in her own house.) www.theguardian.com/society/2016/apr/22/police-raid-pushed-academic-to-end-her-life-euthanasia-advocate-philip-nitschke

What future existing people will feel has nothing to do with what non-existent people feel; that is just your weaseling out of another false allegation. If we don't bring any children into the world, that infringes on the rights or desires of absolutely no non-existent people. If we do allow children to be born, then some of them are going to suffer some circumstances that you yourself would probably not be willing to submit yourself to. We can't know before they are born which of the children are going to 'have a blast' and which are going to live tormented and painful lives, therefore the ethical decision would be the one that doesn't inflict harm on anyone (notwithstanding the 'harm' of not being allowed to impose on others in order to satisfy one's desires), but prevents future harm.

I've only used sanctity to describe the fact that you and your type think that the value that you place on a human life should be more important than the value that the individual places on their own life. And it's not even that you value that person as an individual, it's ostensibly the fact that you think that there's some kind of ineffably sacred essence that lives in all human beings that must be preserved even at the cost of great cruelty and denial of personal autonomy. And there is reason to believe that religion at least strongly reinforces the belief that the individual does not deserve to have any right to self-determination over how long that they live.

There is nothing 'predatory' or 'pathological' about offering a service that people are desperate for, and which has no negative consequences for the person receiving the service (upon request). The only negative consequence is that people such as yourself feel that the world has been depleted of some of this sacred essence, and that you don't get to validate your own lives by torturing and offering vulnerable people up to the gods as blood sacrifices. 

If everyone is paid a fair wage for their labour, that will drastically reduce the amount of goods and services that people in wealthy nations will be able to consume. That's why everything is made in China, Bangladesh, Singapore, Pakistan and places in the same economic strata.

No, I've "dealt with" it in the sense of calmly and rationally explaining my opinion and comprehensively rebutting all of your atavistic and reactionary objections to offering people a free and supported choice.

If it's so trivially easy to end one's existence in a way that is both free of pain and guaranteed to succeed, then one would think that someone like Jack Kevorkian, a doctor with many years of experience and comprehensive knowledge of the human body, would know about it and suggest that to his patients (and decide that for himself, rather than wanting to access drugs for his own use). If Dr Kevorkian, an expert on the human body who has gone through years of medical school as well as a career of practice in the field of medicine, doesn't know about the "trivially easy means", then it must be extremely esoteric knowledge. There's also the Peaceful Pill eHandbook (of which I am a paid subscriber) published by another doctor of many years' experience, Dr Philip Nitschke, which recommends Nembutal as the gold standard, and I haven't come across any "trivially easy" and painless methods in that publication which don't require purchasing some kind of chemical. Of course, not being able to obtain this knowledge even throughout many years of medical school would qualify as a barrier to actually performing the suicide. I'd be interested to find out what your credentials are on this, and how you came by this extremely esoteric knowledge that even qualified and experienced doctors aren't aware of. So your definition of "mentally compromised" would encompass not having specialist esoteric knowledge that even most pro-choice doctors don't know about.

I've never averred that non-existent people can consent. The point is that one cannot obtain consent from a non-existent person and you also can't get consent to do something to someone after you've already irrevocably done it. As life is the source of ALL needs and ALL risks, and non-existent people have neither needs nor desires, those who choose to impose life would need an extremely compelling argument for why it was necessary to bring that life into existence. And of course the action of imposing life impacts whomever is going to live the life that was brought into existence, as well as those sentient beings who could be the victims of that person's actions.

You're the one who is implying that the never-born are missing out on a chance at life and are in an inferior position (even though they don't exist in order to have, let alone appreciate any position) because they weren't conceived. Of course the non-existent being saved is not coherent. You probably spent a lot of time before becoming a parent daydreaming of everything that you could offer your future children; and yet there's nothing that you can do that would confer an advantage over never having played your part in having made them.

What exactly is harmful or undesirable about an old lady having a quantity of barbituate for her own personal usage, such that even after it's already passed through customs and arrived at its destination, the police are justified in breaking into her house and terrorising her to the point where she was so traumatised that she committed suicide very shortly afterwards? Why should she not be allowed to use Nembutal (that's already passed through customs) as a means of suicide rather than something else? Where is your evidence that this woman was a "Youtube crazy" who had sinister intentions involving anyone other than herself? And many qualified doctors with many years of experience in practicing medicine DO think that it's important to be able to access end of life drugs, even for those who are able bodied.

And my only concern is, and always has been with those who exist.