Abstract

In this paper, I develop an approach to population ethics which explains what we are permitted to do in virtue of the possible complaints against our action. This task is made difficult by a serious problem that arises when we attempt to generalize the view from two-option to many-option cases. The solution makes two significant moves – first, accepting that complaints are essentially pairwise comparative, and second, reimagining decision-making as a tournament between options competing two at a time. The right view about when one option defeats another with respect to complaints, paired with the right view about how to pick the winners of the tournament given the relations of defeat, leads to a uniquely attractive view in the person-affecting tradition.