John and Margaret went shopping to buy Christmas presents for their three sons: Matthew, aged 14, Mark, who is 12, and Luke, 10. The loving parents always tried to treat their children equally. This year, they had budgeted to spend £100 on each of them.

For once it looked as if their shopping would be trouble-free, for they soon found what they were looking for: hand-held PlayBoy games consuls at £100 each. Just as they were about to take three to the checkout, John noticed a special offer. If you bought two of the new, top-of-the-range PlayBoyPlusMax consuls at £150 each, you would get an original PlayBoy free. They could spend the same amount of money and get superior goods.

‘We can’t do that’, said Margaret. ‘That would be unfair, since one of the boys would be getting less than the others’.

‘But Margaret’, said John, ‘how can it be unfair? This way none of them gets a worse gift than he would have done, and two of them do better. But if we don’t take the offer, two of the kids are worse off than they would otherwise be’.

‘I want them all to be equal’, replied Margaret.

‘Even it means making them worse off?’

(Taken from Julian Baggini, The Pig that Wants to be Eaten and 99 Other Thought Experiments, p.259)

DO YOU AGREE WITH JOHN OR MARGARET?