Considerations characteristic of the priority view may also be considered relevant for the specification of the threshold of harm.
Even if prioritarians do not see anything intrinsically bad in social, economic or other differences, their priority view is a derivatively egalitarian view.
It thus seems plausible to reject the idea that the priority view as such specifies the relevant threshold of intergenerational harm.
Instead, the priority view can rather be understood to specify what we optimally ought to do as a matter of morality.
This can be an implication of both the priority view and the position of weak sufficientarianism even if the number of people to be considered is fixed; thus, it can arise in situations involving contemporaries only, as noted by Casal for the priority view in her (2007), 319 20; and see Mulgan (2006), 66 79.
Of course, the priority view will not have this implication if all future people were to enjoy levels of well-being that are higher than those of all or most currently living people.
Interestingly, if egalitarianism is defined in opposition to this "priority view" by the feature that it relies on judgments of relative positions, this means that egalitarian values cannot be correctly represented by a separable social welfare function.
Given, first, the large number of future people whose level of well-being can be affected by the decisions and actions of currently living people, and second, that the number of future people depends in part upon currently living people's decisions and actions, the priority view might make unreasonable demands on the currently living.
However, as the priority view, the position of weak sufficientarianism can also make unreasonable demands on the currently living (unless all future people were to enjoy levels of well-being that are higher than those of all or most currently living people).
Parfit's (1997) priority view calls for focusing on improving the situation of society's weaker and poorer members and indeed all the more urgently the worse off they are, even if they can be less helped than others in the process.
