Hey Alex There are a couple of points I want to raise: the issue of a collectivist vs an individualist view of society, and

the notion of imbalances, their occurrence in nature, and our role in redressing them I think the crucial element that seems to be often missing from discussions about society is the extremely important distinction between the collective and the individual. In a way favouring one necessitates damning the other. In fact, perhaps a useful (if less prosaic) rephrasing of the expression "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few" would be "the needs of the more than one outweigh the needs of the one". I could even attempt to represent this mathematically as N{y|y>x,N>0} > N{x|x=1,N>0}. I'm completely new to set theory, so I've probably made a huge mathematical error somewhere in there, but as a representation I think it has some value. The expression is effectively saying that the sum of the needs (N) of the set of y such that y is greater than x and N is greater than zero outweigh the sum of the needs of the set of x such that x equals one and N is greater than zero. For this expression to be true (if that's at all possible, given my dodgy mathematical notation), we have to be able to quantify N. If we assumed that N was a constant, for instance the number 1 (this could represent the idea that if needs are unquantifiable, we may as well assume that no person's need can be quantitatively be said to be greater than another's, and as such if a need for y exists, it is equal to any other person's need for the same thing) then the needs of the set of y will always exceed the needs of the set of x. However, if N can take any value between 0 and infinity, then the needs of one person could be far greater than the needs of any number of people depending on the sum of the needs of the many. Indeed, perhaps we could say that if a need is present, that need is effectively infinitely large, owing to the fact that one person's need cannot be compared to another's. In this case, the needs of the many would be the same as the needs of the few, because the needs of both groups would be infinitely large, so long as each group had a need. Logically this seems to make some sense, so long as the assumptions remain true... but there's the rub. In two of the cases I've just presented, namely the first and the last, I've copped out of having to define what a need is, and simply said that if one exists, it is either equal to one, or it is equal to infinity. Intuitively, I feel this to be false. If my current need for water were to be compared to the need of a man dying of thirst, it would be obvious to me that his need for water far outweighed mine. But then, this also raises another point not yet explored, namely what a need is. If we only have a need for things that help us continue our lives, then the vast majority of things I feel I need in my daily life would not actually be things I need. On the other hand, if my needs are emotional desires I am trying to meet through various means, it raises several questions. Can an emotional need be met through different means? Is the feeling of pleasure one person gets from meeting a need the same as the feeling of pleasure another person gets from meeting the same need? It seems to me that this line of inquiry is leading down a path to unanswerable questions chief among which for me is whether one persons quality of existence can quantitatively be compared to anothers. In my view, the experience of life is such a subjective experience as to be almost meaningless when compared between

individuals. So in my view, it cant ever be reliably said to be true that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, as we have no objective way of comparing them. Another confounding element is that of one persons valuation of their own life versus the valuation they might place on another persons life. There is a psychological experiment that is used to test whether a person is a psychopath that compares a persons theoretical responses in two different hypo thetical scenarios. In the first scenario, you are standing in front of a control lever for a train. If you leave the train to continue on as it is going, it will hit five people who are, for some reason, on the track it is currently heading towards. If you pull the lever, the train will be diverted onto a piece of track with only one person on it, who will subsequently be killed by the train. Evidently, most people would elect to switch the train onto the track with one person on it better that one person dies than five. The second scenario involves a train which is again heading towards five people, but this time you can personally heave a fat man onto the tracks in front of the train. This will kill the man, but save five lives. The idea is that psychopaths will more readily push the fat man onto the tracks. I am curious what the results would be if a third scenario were presented wherein the train is again heading towards five people, but this time you can divert the train such that it will kill you instead of the five people. What will you do then? I personally think that even if a person said that they would divert the train onto a path that would kill them, if ever they found themselves in that actual situation, they would not actually do that. So in my eyes, there will always be an inherent problem in trying to be objective about the value of a persons life, given that the value of ones life to oneself is infinite (except in the case of those who want to commit suicide). So, for this part of my argument, I would conclude that it can never be proven to be true that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, and as such, a utilitarian argument can never be held to be objectively true. However, societies do not operate like this. People are free agents, doing as they please, infringing the rights of other human beings almost on a daily basis. It could be said that human beings derive their power from their ability to work with each other for a common goal. If, in our earlier stages of evolution, we had made a move towards being individual actors in the world, we would almost certainly have become extinct. As such, if we are to succeed as a species, we have to find ways of working together in a productive manner. (As a side note, I wonder whether before our dominance of the animal kingdom, we only ever fought animals, or whether our intra-species in-fighting started long before that. Considering the intense intraspecies combat in many species, I find that unlikely, but an interesting thought nonetheless). If a group of people have a common goal, some things will move them closer to that goal, other things will hinder them. If the group of people is large enough, it would be practical to make it such that any individuals who hinder progress are removed from society, either through rehabilitation, exclusion, banishment or execution. So long as the majority believe this to be true, there can be no disagreement, as the majority will quash the minority. So it strikes me that the fundamental problem is one of theory versus practice. The rules that are so easy to discuss in theory are so much harder to implement in

practice. As such, might we say that a Just society is desirable but totally impractical so long as it is implemented in its purest form? Perhaps another view might be justice implemented as far as possible without hindering progress, or any other level of trade-off. What do you think? As for the correction of imbalances,