Abstract
Consider the following case. Imagine that at some time in the future there is no contact between Europe and North America. The long-term happiness levels of the populations of these two continents are roughly on a par, but in a given ten-year period while the people in North America are very happy, those in Europe are only fairly happy; and for the next ten-year segment of time the situation is reversed: people in Europe are very happy while those in North America are only fairly happy. Their happiness levels are out of step, as it were. Dennis McKerlie's theory would force him to hold that this would be bad, while I find it hard to believe that it would matter. If the happiness levels of the two continents could somehow be brought into step at a cost of some loss of happiness for both, it would surely be perverse to do so. McKerlie would have to take this stand because he rejects the common view that if equality is intrinsically valuable, it is equality between people's lives taken as a whole that matters (complete lives egalitarianism). He argues instead that equality between fairly long simultaneous segments of lives is also intrinsically valuable (segmental egalitarianism).'
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