According to Oxfam’s latest report, by 2016 the richest 1% will own more than all the rest of people in the world. For many, the current and increasing inequality among individuals is deeply worrying. For many of us this is because we believe that equality matters. That is, we hold the view that how desirable a state of affairs is not only depends on the extent to which value is maximised but also on how equally it is distributed among individuals. The underlying idea is that there are no reasons why all those individuals who can be recipients of value should not receive it equally. Who these individuals are depends on what we take the currency of distribution to be. That is, the particular value that should be enjoyed equally. If we accept egalitarianism of well-being, then equality will apply to every individual that can have a well-being of her own. If we believe that it is resources or opportunities for well-being what should be equalised, then equality will apply to all those that can benefit from them. Of course, one could nevertheless restrict the scope of equality to a subset of these individuals. But that would no longer be an egalitarian view. Just as view that claimed that aggregated well-being should be maximised only on Wednesdays would no longer be a version of utilitarianism.

On any of the versions of egalitarianism presented above, the individuals among whom value should be equalised are all those whose lives can go well or badly. They include all sentient beings. Since most nonhuman animals are sentient, our concern about inequality among individuals should be extended to them as well. To exclude some sentient beings from the scope of equality on the grounds of species membership (simply because they are not human) would be unjustified – an instance of speciesist discrimination. Therefore, any sound version of egalitarianism must reject speciesism.

This has very important consequences, as nonhuman animals are very badly off, both in absolute terms (the majority of them exhibit negative levels of well-being) and when compared to most humans. Consider first the animals under human exploitation. These individuals are deprived of virtually every source of enjoyment during their whole lives, only to be killed in extremely painful ways. The number of individuals affected by these practices is appalling. More than 60 billion land animals in the food industry alone, not including aquatic animals, which number in the trillions. Next, regarding animals that live in the wild, even though numbers are hard to obtain, the situation for the overwhelming majority of them is, at least, as bad (and probably worse) than that of exploited animals.

Thus, given that most animals are worse-off than most human beings, egalitarianism implies that a significant amount of resources should be transferred from the latter to the former in order to reduce the inequality in well-being among them. This implication was acknowledged by Peter Vallentyne as a “Problematic Conclusion”, pointing out to the counterintuitive character of treating human and nonhuman well-being on a par. Instead, he suggests that the currency of distribution should be well-being relativized to cognitive capacities (what he terms “fortune”). The implication is that small improvements of well-being in individuals with higher cognitive capacities should be favoured over greater increases in the well-being of individuals with lower cognitive capacities. Since most humans are endowed with high cognitive capacities, they require a greater number of resources than nonhumans in order to have a similar level of fortune. Thus, on this account, our reasons to transfer resources from most humans to most nonhumans are weaker than on an account that considers that well-being is the thing to be equalised. This is clearly an instance of a demandingness objection. The underlying idea is that morality cannot require such substantial sacrifices of human interests for the benefit of nonhuman individuals.

However, this account might end up creating bigger problems than those it attempts to solve. Its implications also apply to humans with cognitive capacities similar to those of nonhuman beings. Yet, it seems hardly acceptable that the interests of human beings with severe cognitive disabilities count for less than the similar interests of the best cognitively endowed humans. The unacceptability of this is particularly clear when considering negative levels of well-being, which there are no reasons to exclude from our assessment. In fact, insofar as these individuals tend to have a lower level of well-being, the satisfaction of their interests should be considered more pressing.

In addition, the account cannot explain how similar interests of rational agents should count for the same when they have differing levels of cognitive capacities. Of course, one could establish a threshold above which the well-being of all rational agents had similar weight, in spite of their different capacities. However, to my knowledge, no non-arbitrary way of defining that threshold has been put forward. And it is hard to see how that could be done. For example, some might claim that the capacities necessary for moral agency ground the relevant threshold. That would imply that similar interests of moral agents count for the same and that they count for more than similar interests of non-moral agents. Yet, that would not do. After all, these are also cognitive capacities, which still come by degrees. Pointing to moral agency as the marker of the threshold does not solve the problem, it merely postpones it. Consequently, Vallentyne’s objection does not stand on solid ground.

Moreover, demandingness objections in general rely on the assumption that any moral theory that makes substantial requirements of us is, on its face, less plausible than a theory that does not. However, it is not clear why a low degree of demandingness should be considered a theoretical virtue in ethics. In fact, the state of the world is so calamitous that any plausible moral theory must entail that hard sacrifices are required.

This is especially true regarding nonhuman animals. Given their very low levels of well-being egalitarianism prescribes that we should not only refrain from harming nonhuman animals (for instance, by becoming vegan) but that we should actively benefit them with the aim of equalising their levels of well-being with our own. This is true both of animals under human control and animals living in the wild, most of whom have lives not worth living. Thus, it is not egalitarianism itself that is demanding. It is because the world is so far removed from the best possible scenario that egalitarianism makes such demands on us.