I have a modest proposal. It is a way, at very little cost, to solve global warming and save countless human lives from violent deaths. It is the logical option, on purely utilitarian grounds.

I propose that we gather up a list of every ethnic group on Earth. And I’m talking pretty specific here. I’m not talking “European,” or even “German.” No I mean like “Bavarian.” That level of specificity. We’ll have a list thousands of ethnicities long.

I will then cut the list apart. Each ethnicity will be on a paper slip. I will put these slips in a hat, give a few good shakes, and select one ethnicity at random. And I mean truly random. It will be a fair drawing. We select an ethnicity from the hat. Individuals of that ethnicity are left alone.

Everyone else goes to the camps.

In this process, we will, depending on the size of the ethnicity randomly selected, wipe out between 90-99.9% of the entire human population. So, on the downside, we will have to lose…approximately 8 billion lives. That is the downside cost.

But think of the upside! We have randomly selected a single ethnic group and wiped everyone else out. That single ethnic group, while still having numbers large enough for viability, now inhabit an empty world. Global warming is now solved. They’ll have no problem with CO2 emissions, as there’s a planet’s worth of solar panels and batteries waiting for them. Over time, their numbers will doubtlessly grow, and they will eventually repopulate the planet.

But think of what will now happen. At the, admittedly steep cost of 8 billion lives, we’ve now eliminated racism forever! In the long run, they might need to engage in some minor genetic engineering to prevent genetic drift, but that should be quite doable. There will now be only a single ethnicity that all humans will share. Think of how many racial pogroms, expulsions, moral panics, race riots, and outright genocides and race wars have happened through history. We’ve been doing that since the dawn of time. Does anyone today think that we’ll ever be immune from that kind of hatred and violence?

So yes, we lose 8 billion lives today, but in turn, we avoid racial prejudice and violence from now UNTIL THE END OF TIME. And we have no idea the scale of conflicts in the future. In a far space faring future, human population might be in the quintillions. In that kind of society, trillions of deaths by racial violence a year would be the equivalent of the hate crime rate experienced in the US today. And we can prevent all of that by simply ethnically downsizing the human population today!

We pay the cost of 8 billion lives now. But in return, we are going to save trillions, perhaps quadrillions. Project forward billions of years, maybe even quintillions.

From a purely utilitarian point of view, the choice is obvious. We must take the path that will save the most lives. We must commence the omnicide.

/Obviously this is not a serious policy proposal, but an illustration of the flaws of utilitarian ethics. Yes, Kamala getting elected would have been objectively better for the Palestinians. It would have likely net saved lives. But the omnicide would also, on net, save lives. And utilitarian value cannot be the only way we make decisions. Justice and the respect for human life are not some trivial thing to be ignored. Let’s not mince words. Biden abetted a genocide; there can be no excuse for this. If there is a Hell beyond this place, then he has assuredly secured himself a fine residence there. What he did was, in fact, a profoundly wicked act. Evil in any meaning of the word. And Kamala promised to continue that evil. Trump would have objectively done even more evil. But again, utilitarian ethics is not the totality of things.

For millions of voters, their moral compasses simply wouldn’t let them have any part of it. The reason we don’t do the omnicide is that we do not have the right to sacrifice countless innocent people based on our best guesses of how the future will turn out. And it’s completely incompatible with any moral system that places innate value on human life. The moral calculus of the pro-Palestine voters that stayed home works on similar logic.

Yes, per our best estimate on election day, Trump would likely be worse for the Palestinians than Kamala would have been. But that is still in the unknown future. We don’t know what tomorrow will hold. But we do know that Kamala was the VP of a president that abetted a genocide. And we know that Kamala herself says she will continue these policies. She was part of that administration. She has culpability in this. Should she not be held accountable? Does she not objectively deserve punishment? Denying her a victory would be an act of justice for those she helped kill. But in turn, it would cause the election of someone likely to be much worse. But there are people who have already died. There are people today in unbearable suffering because of this. By electing her, you are denying them justice. In exchange for what may come to be in the future.

Or think of it another way. Imagine you had a terrorist leader on trial, someone on the order of Osama Bin Laden. He’s convicted and sentenced to hang. As he’s taken to the gallows, he says, “I have a dozen sleeper cells planted through the US. If I die, expect dozens of suicide bombings across the country within the next few days.” Do you stay his sentence, or put it on hold? Or do you just carry forward, and let these future terrorists be responsible for their own actions?

This is the core problem the Palestine abstainers faced. Are elections more about future policy, or are they about accountability? In truth, they’re both. And different people have different ratios of accountability to future policy that they vote on. I personally voted for Kamala, but I can absolutely get the ethical case for not participating at all in this race. If you care far more for future policy than accountability, you vote for Kamala. If you care far more for accountability than future policy, you stay home. A lot of people picked accountability, and as a consequence, Kamala lost.

But perhaps I, and others who did vote for Kamala, have the worst outcome of any voter. I sold my soul and voted for Kamala. I gave up my one chance to apply the only bit of power I have as a voter to hold her accountable. I did it all because I hoped for a better future. But in the end, it didn’t matter. I lost my chance to hold her accountable, and the greater evil still won.