A choice can leave someone worse off than never existing — but never worse for them

Derek Parfit's non-identity problem points out that policies affecting future generations, like depleting resources, don't harm any specific future person, because a different choice would have produced a different person entirely. Someone born into a depleted world can't claim they'd have been better off, since the alternative decision means they'd never have existed at all.

— Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons — Oxford University Press, 1984
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