To me the money quote is this one: "The underlying reasoning here is based on the idea that people – you and I – are nothing more than means to an end. We don’

To me the money quote is this one: "The underlying reasoning here is based on the idea that people – you and I – are nothing more than means to an end. We don’t matter in ourselves; we have no inherent value of our own. Instead, people are understood as the ‘containers’ of value" This is the central problem with any kind of utilitarianism: it gets things backwards. People are not means to an end; they are ends in themselves. Any kind of "value" (which, as the article notes, utilitarians, including "longtermists", basically equate with hedonistic pleasure) is a means to an end, with people being the end.