I have given a more or less direct argument for the truth of MAC, which depends on the presumption that some basic consequentialist normative principle for ranking outcomes is true. But we must also see if MAC can evade the three standard intuitive objections to familiar forms of act consequentialism. And we need a better and more concrete sense of how it works.

One characteristic objection to act consequentialism is that it is too permissive. It sometimes allows or even requires the violation of very intuitive general moral prohibitions against killing, injuring, lying, and the like. There are two different aspects of this objection. First, it underlines the moral significance of certain sorts of goods – for instance, life, health, and true belief – that may be treated as basic by conceivable consequentialist normative principles but that characteristically aren't so treated. Second, it suggests that the maximization even of such goods as life and health by murder and injury – indeed, even of such goods as the relative absence of murders and injuries – is often immoral.

The gilded city is a gaudy reef of predators and pain. A wave of your wand, and it would disappear. Many lives would be lost today. But the world would be a happier place. Indeed, over time it would suffer fewer murders, and include more people, since innocent visitors would not be killed.