評論
打印
"By the principle of utility" Bentham said in 1789, "is meant the principal which approves or disapproves of every action whatsoever according to the tendency which it appears to have to augment or diminish the happiness of the party whose interest is in question." Virtue is, indeed must be, self-centered. While there were people with great good fortune and many more with great ill fortune, the social problem was solved as long as, again in Bentham's words, there was "the greatest good for the greatest number." Society did its best for the largest possible number of people; one accepted that the result might be sadly unpleasant for the many whose happiness was not served
“按照功利的原則，”邊沁在1789年指出，“衡量某一行動可行與否，要依據它的趨勢是會增加還是減少利害相關的人的幸福。”正確的行動是，確實也必須是以自我為中心的。盡管社會上有人擁有大量財富，同時有更多的人沒有財富，用邊沁的話來說，只要“最大的利益給最多的人”就能夠解決社會問題。社會盡力滿足盡可能多的人的利益，然而，對于那些利益沒有被滿足的人來說，人們承認這個結果是悲哀的。
In the 1830's a new formula, influential in no slight degree to this day, became available for getting the poor off the public conscience. This is associated with the names of David Ricardo, a stockbroker, and Thomas Robert Malthus, a divine. The essentials are familiar: the poverty of the poor was the fault of the poor. And it was so because it was a product of their excessive fecundity: their grievously uncontrolled lust caused them to breed up to the full limits of the available subsistence.
在19世紀30年代，出現了一種新的不為窮人的存在而內疚的方案。直至今日它的影響絲毫沒有減弱。這個方案與股票經紀人大衛·李嘉圖和湯姆斯·羅伯特·馬爾薩斯神父兩個人的名字聯系在一起。它的基本觀點為人熟知：窮人的貧窮是他們咎由自取，貧窮是他們過度生育的結果。很遺憾，他們不能控制性欲，過度生育，把地球具有的養活人口的能力推向極限。
This was Malthusianism. Poverty being caused in the bed meant that the rich were not responsible for either its creation or its amelioration. However, Malthus was himself not without a certain feeling of responsibility: he urged that the marriage ceremony contain warning against undue and irresponsible sexual intercourse-a warning, it is fair to say, that has not been accepted as a fully effective method of birth control. In more recent times, Ronald Reagan has said that the best form of population control emerges from the market. (Couples in love should repair to R. H. Macy's, not their bedrooms.) Malthus, it must be said, was at least as relevant.
這就是馬爾薩斯人口論。貧窮源于過度生育意味著富人不應該為產生貧窮和解決貧窮承擔責任。然而，馬爾薩斯本人并非缺乏責任心之人：他極力主張結婚儀式應該包括對過度或不負責任的性生活的警告——公正地說，作為一種完全有效的控制生育的方法，它并沒有被人們所接受。在最近，羅納德·里根曾經說過控制人口的最佳形式來自市場。（一對對熱戀的新婚夫婦應該到梅西百貨公司采購，而不是到他們的臥室去生孩子。）應該說，馬爾薩斯的建議至少還沾點兒邊。
