Utilitarianism: The Greater Good

Read this article which presents difficulties with calculating benefits and various utilitarian responses to those difficulties. Be able to define hedonistic and idealistic utilitarianism, soft and hard utilitarianism, and the difference between act and rule.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Utilitarian Ethics in Business

Basic utilitarianism is the soft, act version. These are the theory's central advantages:

  • Clarity and simplicity. In general terms, it's easy to understand the idea that we should all act to increase the general welfare.
  • Acceptability. The idea of bringing the greatest good to the greatest number coheres with common and popular ideas about what ethical guidance is supposed to provide.
  • Flexibility. The weighing of individual actions in terms of their consequences allows for meaningful and firm ethical rules without requiring that everyone be treated identically no matter how different the particular situation. So the students whose scores were suspended by the College Board could see them reinstated, but that doesn't mean the College Board will take the same action in the future (if, say, large numbers of people start stealing test booklets).
  • Breadth. The focus on outcomes as registered by society overall makes the theory attractive for those interested in public policy. Utilitarianism provides a foundation and guidance for business regulation by government.

The central difficulties and disadvantages of utilitarianism include the following:

  • Subjectivity. It can be hard to make the theory work because it's difficult to know what makes happiness and unhappiness for specific individuals. When the College Board demanded that KDCP give free classes to underprivileged high schoolers, some paying students were probably happy to hear the news, but others probably fretted about paying for what others received free. And among those who received the classes, probably the amount of resulting happiness varied between them.
  • Quantification. Happiness can't be measured with a ruler or weighed on a scale; it's hard to know exactly how much happiness and unhappiness any particular act produces. This translates into confusion at decision time. (Monetized utilitarianism, like that exhibited in the case of the Ford Pinto, responds to this confusion.)
  • Apparent injustices. Utilitarian principles can produce specific decisions that seem wrong. A quick example is the dying grandmother who informs her son that she's got $200,000 stuffed into her mattress. She asks the son to divide the money with his brother. This brother, however, is a gambling alcoholic who'll quickly fritter away his share. In that case, the utilitarian would recommend that the other brother – the responsible one with children to put through college – just keep all the money. That would produce the most happiness, but do we really want to deny grandma her last wish?
  • The utilitarian monster is a hypothetical individual who really knows how to feel good. Imagine that someone or a certain group of people were found to have a much greater capacity to experience happiness than others. In that case, the strict utilitarian would have no choice but to put everyone else to work producing luxuries and other pleasures for these select individuals. In this hypothetical situation, there could even be an argument for forced labor as long as it could be shown that the servants' suffering was minor compared to the great joy celebrated by those few who were served. Shifting this into economic and business terms, there's a potential utilitarian argument here for vast wage disparities in the workplace.
  • The utilitarian sacrifice is the selection of one person to suffer terribly so that others may be pleasured. Think of gladiatorial games in which a few contestants suffer miserably, but a tremendous number of spectators enjoy the thrill of the contest. Moving the same point from entertainment into the business of medical research, there's a utilitarian argument here for drafting individuals – even against their will – to endure horrifying medical experiments if it could be shown that the experiments would, say, cure cancer, and so create tremendous happiness in the future.