fwiw i read the infrastructuralization article twice and while i think it's very commendable and impressive, i still don't really understand why consent is necessary, or why infrastructuralization is intrinsically bad

there are numerous examples i can think of where someone can give consent, yet we shouldn't abide by what they want (for example, if someone asks for crack, we almost certainly should *not* give it to them, even though they consented to it), and there are numerous examples i can think of where someone can't give consent yet we should still do something to them (for example, we should send children to school even if they don't consent to it);

i will also say, i'm hedonistic utilitarian so the only things i think have intrinsic value or pleasure and pain, so i do think that, in general, consent is good because it generally leads to more overall well-being (for example, it's funner to play a soccer game against a team that chooses to play, rather than being forced to play); but, then, the consent doesn't have intrinsic value; it has *instrumental* value because it leads to more overall well-being, which *does* have intrinsic value

so i have a feeling that some parts of your argument may be able to be reduced to hedonistic utilitarianism, at least as far as i see it

but i should also add that i'm not terribly informed on other normative ethical theories, and i'm probably quite biased towards utilitarianism lol

just to give more examples about why i don't think consent is the end-all be-all, you can look at vaccines and elections;

1) with vaccines, many people don't consent to getting vaccinated; if consent was intrinsically important and always necessary, it would follow that we shouldn't force people to get vaccinated. however, i would disagree with this (and i think many people would too); by allowing some people not to get vaccinated, it will cause more people to die and it will also allow viruses to survive, mutate, and develop resistance to the vaccines, so even those who are vaccinated may also die; hence, i don't think the consent argument works here (but hedonistic utilitarianism provides a nice answer: mandatory vaccines would produce greater net well-being than optional vaccines for deadly contagious viruses, and hence it would be morally better to make vaccines mandatory than optional)

2) with elections, many people don't consent to voting and choose to abstain from voting; if consent was intrinsically important and always necessary, it would follow that we shouldn't force people to vote. however, i would also disagree with this (and i think most people who have done their research on this matter would agree too); there is ample research and examples (you can see some of it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_voting) that compulsory voting helps to ensure that government officials are more moderate and less extreme and also more representative of the actual population (which surely should be a desirable property of a *representative* democracy); this is why countries with compulsory voting, like australia and singapore, tend to be more immune to far-right populists/demagogues; hence, i don't think the consent argument works here

and on that second point, hedonistic act utilitarianism again provides a good answer; according to hedonistic act utilitarianism, voting should be compulsory since it would produce more net welfare compared to if voting were optional

as further examples of things were not everyone consents but they should ultimately be done, think about taxation, compulsory schooling, (relatively) open borders, etc.

to me, it seems like there are numerous instances in the real world where we morally should violate people's consent;

now, i anticipate that you may have some objections to this, so i will try to respond to these predicted objections;

objection 1) "These examples are different than procreation since procreation involves creating a life whereas the other ones don't";

It is true that procreation involves creating a life, yet it's not necessarily true that my other examples don't have anything to do with creating lives; for example, by making certain vaccines mandatory, that will cause more infants to survive to adulthood, thus reducing the amount of procreation parents need to do in order to have a healthy child that can reach adulthood; making elections mandatory could help get more candidates into power who want to protect women's reproductive health; improving taxation can increase state revenue to fund women's reproductive health; compulsory education can help make women more educated and open the doors to more and better careers, which has been shown (there is a *ton* of evidence of this) to decrease fertility rates; and having more open borders allows immigrants to have access to better healthcare and education, which again generally reduces the number of children that they create;

second of all, even after we account for the fact that these other examples also affect procreation, i still don't see why it would matter that procreation involves creating a life whereas the others don't; from what i understand, the gist of why procreation is bad according to the consent argument is that the potential offspring in question can't consent to coming into existence (because they didn't yet exist); now, it is true that the reason why the potential offspring can't consent to existence is because they don't yet exist at the time that the decision of whether or not to create a child is made, but that's not the direct reason why procreation is bad (according to the consent argument from my understanding)

the direct reason why procreation is bad, according to the consent argument, is simply that the potential child can't consent; the fact that they don't exist is not the direct cause of procreation being bad; hence i don't see why the fact that procreation involves creating a new life whereas my examples don't is relevant

objection 2) "These examples are different than procreation since these examples affect the well-being/health of the general population, whereas procreation doesn't";

It is true that my examples affect the well-being/health of the general population, but it doesn't seem to me to be true that procreation doesn't affect the well-being/health of the general population; creating people means there will be more people to do necessary jobs, like plumbing, electrician work, doctors/nurses, firefighters, caretakers for elders, farmers, scientists, engineers, diplomats, and all the other jobs that are necessary and contribute to the well-being/health of the general population (at least in the world today); furthermore, procreation *does* affect the health of the woman who may be the potential mother of the potential child, as well as the people close to the woman; many people have strong interests in procreation, child-bearing, and child-rearing, and denying people the access to engage in procreation and child-bearing *can* vastly negatively affect their mental health (and, as we all know, there is a strong link between mental health and physical health and social health, so the downstream adverse effects aren't confined to just mental health); the family of the woman who doesn't have the child may be disappointed because they had an interest in continuing their lineage, or they were depending on having family members to help take care of elders, etc.; so procreation absolutely *can* affect the well-being/health of others, including both those close to the potential child and society at large

objection 3) "These examples are different than procreation since, in the examples, a majority of the population consents to the topic in question, whereas with procreation, that's not the case";

This is an interesting objection because, if you genuinely do believe this objection, it would mean that consent is only required by a majority of participants (or 60% or 70% or whatever threshold you choose); but it seems to me that there are many problems with this:

problem a) how do you choose the threshold? is it simply just 50% or more of the population in question that needs to consent? 60% or more? what is it and, crucially, *why?* if the consent threshold is 60%, then why is it 60% and not 61% or 59%? this seems to me that, in almost all cases, this is an *extremely* difficult answer to defend

furthermore, this *is* the case with procreation; with procreation, the potential parent almost always consents to having the child (unless they were raped or heavily pressured by their family/society); furthermore, the doctor usually consents, the woman's significant other (if any) usually consents, her family usually consents, and society in general generally consents (most people are either pro-life or pro-choice, either way most people believe that a woman's consent is enough for her to be able to decide whether or not she wants to create a child; also, society needs younger people to be able to pay taxes for social security and other public services); so there seems to be *so* many people that consent to procreation, so why should the potential child's lack of consent alone be strong enough to override all the other consent given by the rest of the population (whatever the relevant population is)?

problem b) how do you decide what the relevant population is? with mandatory voting, maybe you could say that only a majority of residents of, say, canada, or australia, or whatever country it is, needs to consent in order to make voting mandatory; but why is it just the residents of that country and not the residents of other countries? as we are all well-aware, what happens with american politics has vast effects on the rest of the world, so why should it only be the american population where consent is necessary?

furthermore, this, again, *is* the case with procreation; is the only person whose consent matters is the potential child? or is it the child and the woman who would bear the child? or is it the child and both the parents, if there is more than one parent? or is the child and its family (including siblings, uncles, aunts, etc.)? or is the child and its city? or the child and its country? on the child and everyone in the world? what is it and *why?* i anticipate, again, that this will be extremely difficult to answer and *defend*; if only the potential child's consent matters, then why does the woman's consent not matter? if it's both the potential child's consent and the woman's consent that matters, then why is it not, say, the doctor's or the husband (if the woman has a husband)? i anticipate that, if you do indeed believe in objection 3, then your answer will be very hard to defend

problem c) how do you decide how much weight to give to each person in the relevant population? if only the potential child's consent matters, then this is an easy question to answer (although maybe not so easy to defend/justify); if multiple people's consent matters, then are they weighed equally? or are there different weights (say, 70% the child, 20% the mother, 10% everyone else)? if there are different weights, then again, *why?*

if we try to apply consent to mandatory voting again, we can see that we don't really have an answer; generally, votes count equally in liberal democracies, although i don't see how the consent argument can provide an answer why (not everyone consents to counting every vote equally; for example, some people believe that would-be voters should have to pass a civics test in order to vote, some people believe that criminals or those with a criminal record should not be able to vote, some people believe experts should have a higher weighted-vote than non-experts, most people don't believe children should be able to vote, etc.); this is, again, a case where hedonistic utilitarian provides a nice and simple answer; according to hedonistic utilitarianism, we should count everyone's vote equally because it will maximize total well-being (there will be a ton of outrage if some people's vote, or consent to whatever politician will represent them, doesn't count as much as others'); i'm not sure how you can use consent to defend either the procreation scenario or the voting scenario

problem d) i had another issue with objection 3 but i forgot it 😔 i'll go back and edit this once i remember

in any case, if you do genuinely believe objection 3, then i both don't agree that procreation involves only the consent of the potential child (or, at least, i don't see how you can reach *and defend* that conclusion using consent without appealing to some other normative ethical theory), *and* i also think there will be many issues that will arise, such as the ones i listed earlier

these are my issues with the consent argument that i can think of at the moment, based on my understanding of the consent argument and your writings 😄

(also, note that benatar's asymmetry + hedonistic act utilitarianism neatly makes all these issues go away, which i kinda brought up a couple times throughout my super long reply)

so, i think (at least) one of the following will happen:

a) you will say that i misunderstood your argument and that these objections don't actually apply

b) you will say that i understood your argument sufficiently, yet defend it and come up with replies to my objections (i think this will be hard to do but i applaud the valiant attempt)

c) you will say that i understood your argument sufficiently and admit that the objections are valid, *but* insist that your argument still works better than benatar's (supplemented with hedonistic utilitarianism)

d) you will say that i understood your argument sufficiently and that i made a convincing case and you will drop the consent argument

i also think that much of what i said can be modified to fit the infrastructuralization argument, although to be honest i'm still trying to wrap my head around that argument, so i don't know if i want to give a reply to that just yet

i think it is also possible that you could deny one objection, admit another, qualify another, etc., although i think it would be pretty difficult to come up with a coherent answer *and* defense/justification for why some of the objections i raised are valid whereas others aren't

i also quite like the asymmetry argument and the no victim argument, but i've honestly always found the consent argument to not be very convincing, so i think it helps that i've always been at least somewhat aware of the consent argument, although i genuinely don't think i fully interpreted nume's argument correctly (which is 90% my fault)

one more thing i don't really fully understand is why can't posthumous consent justify procreation? if a person feels glad that they exist (i.e. they posthumously consent to their having been brought into existence), why is the lack of consent from nonexistence (which could've been decades ago, depending on how old the person is) strong enough to override the current consent that they currently give, and that they have been giving for their entire life?

i'm not sure how the consent argument could provide an answer and justification to this point, but benatar's asymmetry + hedonistic uilitarianism provides a nice simple answer:

even if someone posthumously consents to their having been brought into existence, the reason why it still would've been better for their sake not to be brought into existence is because benatar's asymmetry simply proves that the pleasures (or benefits) from existence are not an advantage over the lack of pleasure (or benefits) in nonexistence, whereas the presence of pains (or harms) in existence *is* a disadvantage relative to the lack of pains (or harms) in nonexistence;

so, for someone's sake, it is always bad for them to have been brought into existence because of the asymmetry argument;

now, it could be the case that it would still be morally good to bring them into existence *if* the net amount of pleasure that their existence would've caused to others (like the parents, siblings, their country, etc.) is enough to override the pains they experience in their life

another issue i have is this:

for example, if we say that 98% people who come into existence are grateful for having come into existence (i.e. they posthumously consent to their having been brought into existence), why is the 2%'s lack of consent strong enough to override the consent of everyone else? why should we not bring anyone into existence at all just to appease the lack of consent from the nonexistent and the tiny 2%'s lack of consent? why is that lack of consent so much stronger than the vast majority's consent?

again, i'm not sure how the consent argument could provide both an answer *and* a defendable justification to this point, but benatar's asymmetry + hedonistic utilitarianism again provides a nice simple answer:

like i said in the previous post, benatar's asymmetry proves that nonexistence is *always* better (except for the extremely extremely hypothetical case where someone's life contains no suffering or pain at all) for their sake than existence is; so, essentially, their consent doesn't change the fact that never coming into existence would've been better than their coming into existence

actually i do have two more objections that i can think of right now:

you said earlier that one of the strengtths of your argument, as you saw it, was that it avoided the non-identity problem; i actually don't think that's true, because of what i said up here:

the consent argument would require you to maintain that the lack of consent from nonexistence is strong enough to override a life full of posthumous consent; but i think, in order to do this, you'd have to somehow compare the lack of consent from nonexistence to the posthumous consent in existence and say that, somehow the lack of consent from nonexistence overrides the life full of posthumous consent; but you'd be comparing nonexistence to exstence and hence you'd have to deal with the non-identity problem, just like benatar did with the asymmetry argument;

in other words, if you maintain that the lack of consent from nonexistence somehow is strong enough to override the consent from existence, you have to draw some sort of thread between nonexistence and existence in order to prove that the lack of consent from nonexistence, before the person came into existence, is strong enough to override their present posthumous consent; you have to prove that their present consent is outweighed by "their" lack of consent before even coming into existence, which, i would think, requires tackling the non-identity problem (maybe there's a way you can address this without addressing the non-identity problem, although i'm not sure how you could do that)

i anticipate you may make an objection and insist that you actually *can* avoid the non-identity problem, and i will try to respond to that objection here:

objection 5) "we *can* avoid the non-identity problem by explaining how a person's present, posthumous consent is always overrided by their lack of consent from nonexistence by simplying denying that these two things have anything to do with each other"

so (and, of course, i'm not sure that you will actually make that objection, but i think you may and so i'm responding just in case and for posterity) i think the objection basically means that since the extant person is not the "same" nonexistent but potential person from before their conception, then the consent from the existing person doesn't have any bearing on the lack of consent before nonexistence;

but i'm pretty sure that this *does* address the non-identity problem; you are insisting that no comparison can be drawn between a person's "nonexistence" from before they were born to their existence, but this addresses the non-identity problem because it directly conflicts with benatar's claim that you can get around the non-identity problem by thinking of the alternative world in which the person never exists; so by coming into conflict with benatar's stance on the non-identity problem, *you are engaging in the non-identity problem* (from what i can see)

furthermore, not only do you engage in the non-identity problem, but i also disagree that an existing person and their prior nonexistence have nothing to do with each other, because if they genuinely had nothing to do with each other, that would mean the present consent *cannot* be overriden by the lack of consent from before their existence, since they aren't consents from the same "person;" but this is *not* what you argued; you argued that present consent in an existing person *can* be overriden by the lack of consent from before their existence, which is why you mentioned throughout your articles that being grateful for coming into existence is not strong enough to change the fact that the "person" didn't give consent during nonexistence (at least from how i understand what you wrote, like when you wrote "But gratitude after the fact is not a receipt for the beginning.")

this is another issue i have from your infrastructuralization article:

> Procreation raises the first kind of availability, but not every act of procreation is infrastructuralizing. A child created to continue a lineage, replenish a nation, fulfil a religious duty, or complete a parent’s project is made for use: the unsettled beginning and the wrong of infrastructuralization converge. A child created in the hope of their own flourishing is not thereby supply for an external project;

i'm not convinced by this; if we create a child in hope of their own fluorishing, is that not supply for our project of maximzing well-being?

if someone procreates, not out of their own interest and not out of the interest of anyone else that already exists, or any system that already exists in society, then that person must procreate *only* in the interest of the potential person; hence, the person believes they have some sort of duty, or at least some sort of moral right, to create the child; but is this not part of their project of fulfilling whatever moral duties or exercising whatever moral rights they may feel like they have?

is this not part of fulfilling the parent's desire to fulfill their moral obligations?

also, what about if someone creates a child both for their own interest and for the interests of others (like fulfilling procreative desires and raising tax revenue for society)? is it a majority-rules situation or must it be the case that 100% of the potential parent's reason for creating the child must be in the potential child's interest? i genuinely don't think this is possible; surely the parent would be completing some sort of project of fulfilling their moral duties?

it may help if you be more specific about what exactly you mean by a "project"

i agree, but i don't see how that follows from the *consent* argument; i think this would also require tackling the non-identity problem (looking at how the not caring from nonexistence overrides the consent in existence), which nume tried to avoid;

furthermore, if the nonexistent don't care about not coming into existence without their consent, then why would they care about coming into existence without their consent? the only way the nonexistent could "care" would be by drawing some sort of connection or thread between the nonexistent and the person who comes into existence. i may be overthinking this, but i don't see how the consent argument alone is strong enough to answer this question (i think, at the very least, you'd have to address the non-identity problem)

so, either one of two things must be the case:

a) the nonexistent both don't care about *not* existing without their consent and they don't care about existing without their consent; but this would mean that if someone lives their life glad that they exist (i.e. providing posthumous consent), then if the nonexistent simply don't care either way and the existing person gives consent, then i don't see why it was bad for that person to come into existence; i'm not sure how the consent argument could respond to this

b) the nonexistent don't care about *not* existing without their consent, but they *do* care about existing without their consent; but how is this possible? how could a nonexistent entity "care" about something? this is another case where i'm not sure the consent argument would be able to explain this (and i *definitely* don't think it would be possible to explain this without invoking some sort of axiological asymmetry, but then we just have the asymmetry argument and not a separate "consent" argument)

maybe one could instead say:

the nonexistent don't care about not coming into existence without their consent and they don't care about coming into existence without their consent, while the existent either don't feel glad to exist (i.e. they don't posthumously give consent; this would be a "harm") or the existent do feel glad to exist (i.e. they posthumously give consent; this would be a "benefit");

then, we can see that the harm of living a life one does not consent to is a clear disadvantage relative to nonexistence, *but* living a life that one *did* consent to is not an advantage relative to nonexistence, since the only reason one even needs to care about consent in the first place is because they were brought into existence

but then this is literally just the asymmetry argument, just a very bizarre version where "benefits" are interpreted to only mean "living a life one consented to" and "harms" are interpreted to only mean "living a life one did not consent to"; i think this may be better than the consent argument and it may avoid a lot of the issues with the consent argument that i raised earlier, but i still find this version of the asymmetry argument to be highly improbable;

why would consent about existence be the only possible beneft? why would nonconsent about existence be the only possible harm? this is why i like the asymmetry argument with hedonistic understandings of benefits and harms (i.e. benefits are all pleasures and harms are all pains)

there's are actually more things i have to say about infrastructuralization/consent, let's see if i have enough time to write them all:

one thing i noticed you never talked about (from what i could tell) in your articles was about consent for *not* doing things; all your examples focused on consent for doing things (like bringing someone into existence or using someone as fodder for capitalism), but you never talked about when, if ever, consent may be needed to refrain from doing something, and you never justified why;

for example, if someone is stuck inside a burning car and the only way to save them is by breaking one of their arms, why would i need them to consent in order to do it? it seems to me like we very obviously should intervene; in other words, action seems to be the default, and it would make more sense that we would need their consent *not* to intervene

or, for example, take the war between vietnam and democratic kampuchea (that was cambodia back when it was under the control of the genocidal khmer rouge; i chose this example because i would think every sane person who knows about this conflict would agree that this was a just war); the vietnamese never got the consent from cambodians to invade their country, but i can't see why they would've needed their consent (cambodia lost about a third of its population to the khmer rouge's cambodian genocide); on the flip side, it would seem to me that, if anything, vietnam would need cambodians' consent *not* to intervene; 

furthermore, if you agree with me that vietnam wouldn't need cambodians' consent, we'd then get into the sticky territory of what if *some* cambodians consented, and some didn't? what should we do? should we go with a threshold? but then we get all those issues that brought up with objection 3 earlier where i was talking about some of the issues with thresholds; should vietnam just not have intervened at all had at least just *one* cambodian didn't give consent? this seems pretty ridiculous to me;

it seems to me that you're going to have to modify your consent argument, or at least elaborate somewhere, about consent with *non*-action (or, consent to refrain from acting), including when, if ever, consent is needed, *why* is it needed, *and* a justification/defense of your answer; but i'd imagine that your consent argument, after being modified/qualified to account for this particular objection, *plus* all of the objections i mentioned earlier, is going to be an ugly frankensteinian monster of an argument that will probably be inelegant, seemingly arbitrary, and probably *very* hard to defend : D

i'll give another example: say a state legislature has tax revenue and they're deciding whether or not to spend nothing or to spend it on children's school lunches; would the state legislature need the consent of its constituents to spend the tax revenue on the children's school lunches? i would think not; if anything, i would think the legislature would need consent *not* to spend the money on school lunches (if any consent is needed at all here)

or, as another example, say a billionaire donates $1 million to the World Food Programme (WFP) to improve the qualify-of-life of people in burundi (pretend, for the sake of this example, that the philanthropic donation works as intended; it doesn't make africa poorer); would the billionaire need burundians' consent? again, i would think not; if anything, i think they would need the consent of the burundians' *not* to make the philanthropic donation (if any consent is needed at all here)

now, i anticipate that you will make some objections to what i've said here, and so i will list the objections i anticipate and respond to them:

objection 7 (i think we're on 7 by now)) "Consent is only not needed if refraining from doing something would involve violating one of our moral duties"

part of the problem with this objection, though, is that it wouldn't explain the billionaire example i gave; the billionaire (most people would believe) does not have a moral obligation to donate to the WPF, yet they don't need the burundians' consent to make the philanthropic donation to the WPF

objection 8) "Consent is only not needed if it will benefit the subject"

the issue with this objection is that it doesn't explain antinatalism, it just results in a circular argument; the reason why, possibly, you believe consent isn't needed to not bring someone into existence is because you believe it will benefit them (or at least be better than bringing them into existence); but why does it benefit someone not to bring them into existence? because of AN; it's a circular argument

objection 9) "Consent is only not needed if there will be a victim"

this is an interesting objection because it seems, to me, that if you do genuinely believe this objection, then you may simply have the No Victim argument (you can find a summary of it here: https://iep.utm.edu/anti-natalism/#SH1h); but then the issue is that you need the No Victim argument to explain your AN argument, and so your AN argument is just not necessary and collapses to the No Victim Argument;

if consent isn't needed if there is no victim and *is* needed if there is a victim, then since bringing someone into existence involves a victim (the child will experience the harms in existence) while not bringing someone into existence doesn't involve a victim (the potential child never becomes an actual child and hence can't be a victim), then you simply just have (a variation of) the No Victim argument

ok i'm finally going to be done now, at least for today

i didn't elaborate too much on objections 7, 8, and 9 because i've been doing this for hours so i was kind of rushing to get it done

i hope you take my comments into consideration : D

also nume, i honestly don't see how infrastructuralization doesn't imply pro-mortalism

for the record, i don't think the asymmetry argument, quality-of-life argument, no victim argument, consent argument, or exploitation argument (you can find the summaries of each of these here: https://iep.utm.edu/anti-natalism/) by themselves imply PM, although i feel like infrastructuralization does

i'm sure i may just be misunderstanding it, but i think if i'm right, this is something you may be concerned about

---

so Nume with regards to promortalism and infrasructuralization, it seems to me that the infrastructuralization argument would imply that we ought to take our own lives;

if our lives really are full of infrastructuralizing relations (e.g. from the state, our employers, our family, our bloodline, etc.) and in nonexistence we aren't involved in any infrastructuralizing relations (because we can't even be involved in any relations at all, if we don't exist), wouldn't that imply that we ought to take our own life?

i feel like either i'm misunderstanding infrastructuralization, or you may have to modify your argument; because as far as i can tell, if we just take infrastructuralization alone, nonexistence has no infrastructuralizing relations, whereas existence does; hence nonexistence must be better, and so we should take our own life

i feel like infrastructuralization may even imply that we ought to kill others, since killing someone else could be said to be an infrastructuralizing relation, but it will also be a relation that ensures that the subject will never again experience another infrastructuralizing relation (so the good of it being the last infrastructuralizing relation the subject will ever experience will almost certainly outweigh the bad from it being an infrastructuralizing relation itself)

unless there's something else about why death is bad for us that you didn't write about (or that i didn't see or didn't understand), even if it solves our problems of infrastructuralizing relations, then it seems to me that infrastructuralization implies promortalism

for the record, i don't think the asymmetry argument alone implies promortalism, since the asymmetry just compares two counterfactual worlds; one in which person X exists, and one in which they never exist; it does *not* compare two worlds, one in which person X exists and one in which they *cease* to exist (this latter comparison would correspond to promortalism)

i don't think the quality-of-life argument alone implies promortalism since it's possible that there is a lower threshold for quality-of-life needed to make a life worth continuing compared to for a life worth starting

i don't think the exploitation argument alone implies promortalism since one someone has grown up past the stage of their life where they are a baby, the exploitation has ceased, and hence there is no reason, from the exploitation argument alone, to take one's own life

i don't think the consent argument alone implies promortalism since, once someone does exist, they can consent to their continued existence

so i think all these other well-established AN arguments manage to avoid PM (if we just take the argument itself, and not combine it with anything else like Epicurean arguments, utilitarianism, deontology, etc.); but it seems to me that infrastructuralization *does* lead to PM;

i anticipate you may object and say that we shouldn't necessarily kill ourselves, since there are ways to make projects/relationships more accountable to us;

but the problem with this is, why should i prefer that over suicide? suicide happens instantaneously, it requires very little coordination with others, and it *guarantees* that we will never get into another infrastructuralizing relationship again; what makes continuing to exist and trying to improve institutions better than suicide for our sake?

maybe you could also combine infrastructuralization with something else; you could combine it with

a) benatar's argument for why death is bad; but this has its own set of issues that have already been extensively written about in the literature

b) hedonistic utilitarianism; but i feel like this deinitely conflicts with the consent argument and it probably conflicts with the infrastructuralization argument (i haven't given too much thought to this yet)

c) deontology; but deontology has a ton of problems too that have also already been extensively written about in the literature

also, if you do combine infrastructuralization with another theory, your theory gets more complicated, harder to defend, and less elegant, and i don't really know why it should be preferred over one of the already-established arguments (like those on the IEP)