Utilitarianism in an Age of Moral Turbulence
In praise of a moral framework that is clear, easy to apply, and gives us the cost-benefit tools to properly analyze key social tradeoffs
Pandemics, we have discovered, bring an immediate and urgent focus to moral questions we thought we would have our whole lives to answer. As a result, we now find ourselves under siege from attention merchants, each vaunting their own moral perspective on this unique crisis and condemning the views of others as misguided and dangerous.
Amidst all the uncertainty, we may find clarity in our philosophy textbooks with a modern revival of classical utilitarianism.
Utilitarianism is a moral framework that says we should try to do the most good that we can, typically by maximizing happiness or the fulfillment of preferences of everyone affected.
In a sense, this obviously doesn’t need a grand revival. Grains of utilitarian thinking are present throughout good government. Any time an analyst “crunches the numbers” to decide which policy would most benefit the public, it hearkens to the objective maximization of utility.
In fact, the 2019 Nobel Prize in economics went to three researchers, Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, and Michael Kremer, who…
