We argue that betterness is incomplete: there are possible situations neither of which is at least as good as the other. Unlike more familiar arguments for this conclusion [Raz, 1986, Chang, 2002], our assumptions are consistent with completeness for individual wellbeing levels, and for situations where only finitely many people are affected.

Central to our defense of the argument is to isolate and motivate a particular sense in which betterness is impartial, and compare it with a related argument by Askell [2018] that depends on more contentious claims about the metaphysics of betterness.