Utilitarianism
utility, you are inadvertently contributing to the degradation of a stable system and the stability of the system is what brings more utility. 34
But utilitarianism would suggest that up to the point, where giving away your money is not significantly reducing your own utility, if the money is better served elsewhere it should not be spent on items that will only marginally increase your own utility but be spent on something which could significant ly increase another person’s utility. The diminishing marginal utility of wealth states that it is important to find a balance of maintaining a stable system and creating as much utility with the money (/scarce resources) that we have through carefully calculated distribution. A disabled man may require lots of resources for a small amount of utility gain compared to a healthy person but the statewould not be encouraged by utilitarianism to give the healthy man all the resources (money) because maximizing utility is best done through providing a balance and finding ways to increase the disabled person's utility more efficiently. It would encourage the careful provision of resources to ensure everyone (or asmany people as possible) avoid suffering: somemay needmore than others to achieve this. Sadly, in countries which don’t have enough resources, it is often those who require more resources for the same utility who miss out. In the circumstance of not being able to provide for everyone, those who are the greatest burden are often left out - this is what utilitarianism would suggest. It may seem unfair as disability is mostly random. However, distributing resources when they are scarce to save the most lives is more g88d than saving fewer lives. In the UK the state allocates money for healthcare to patients. The UK is wealthy enough to be able to ensure that everyone is treated and no one suffers - up to a point. Therefore, beyond £30,000 per year 35 the government decides a patient’s treatment is too expensi ve and not worth the cost. Beyond £30,000 the cost of treating a patient would start to dip into money used to treat other patients. Beyond that amount there is a utility opportunity cost. When the Chinese healthcare system faced a shortage of resources (namely ventilators) in the 2020 virus pandemic, the appropriate utilitarian actions were taken. First, more ventilators were built. In the meantime, they allocated the ventilators to those patients who would gain the most value from them. This was worked out by a series of factors such as potential utility left to gain and probability of survival. 36
The utility monster
Nozick theorized a person to whi ch marginal utility loss didn’t apply. 37 He used the example of a monster who gains more pleasure from the available resource than anyone else. To maximize utility we would therefore give all our resources to the monster at the cost of everyone else. That is, we should give all the ice creams to the monster because he appreciates every single ice cream far more than anyone else.
34 Similarly, your time is a resource. Utilitarianismwould not suggest you quit your job to collect money for Oxfam on a full-time basis. On the grounds that suggesting such an idea too widely would lead to collapse. It could be argued that too many people start charities these days and that they end up doubling up on the same cause. Utilitarianismwould suggest less people take paid work in charity because this would increase the efficiency of donations. 35 Cook 2014. 36 This can be derived frommainly age, but also if someone is extremely disabled they may have less to live for. 37 Nozick 1974: 41.
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