Peer Reply 1:
Rebecca Haynes
I have the same concerns regarding health care costs and who will pay for it. On the one hand, I can understand the predicament: someone has to foot the bill later on down the road, but at the moment people need care and that should not be ignored. Figuring out the best approach so that the greatest common good can be achieved is especially difficult in this type of situation, as there is not a lot of commonality among people anymore, for one.
We are very divided in our beliefs and in our needs, and so just trying to get to a place where we can say for certain that this is the greatest common good over here or that this is it over there—that just seems so unlikely at this point in time. For that reason, I question the validity of the utilitarian approach at this moment in time. However, I also appreciate its philosophical tenets and if we as a collective society could just get to a point where we can agree on things going forward, I think a lot of pain and suffering could be avoided later on.
Peer Reply 2:
David Velazquez
This is a great example of how a utilitarian approach would work. It shows that for smokers, it is a difficult process to swallow, because they...
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