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The Tendency Toward Equality in
Utilitarianism The following argument shows that utilitarian
ethics tends to lead toward equality in distribution of income: 1.
The utility that each person derives from his income increases if his
income gets larger, but an extra dollar of income produces less extra utility the more income a
person already has. 2.
The utility that each person derives from his income depends only on
how much he gets, not on the income of others. 3.
Each person obtains the same amount of utility from a given amount of
income that any other person would get from that income. 4.
The total amount of income to be distributed does not depend on the
way that that total is divided up among those receiving income. 5.
The morally right distribution is the one that maximizes total
utility. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 6.
Therefore, the morally right distribution of income is the one in
which everyone receives an equal amount. Comments: 1.
Premise 1 is called the "declining marginal utility of
income." It means that a poor person gets more utility out of a dollar
than a rich person does. Economists often assume that the utility of most
things obeys a law like this, not just income. 2.
Premise 2 says that people don't care what others get, only what they
get. This is probably false, but is a standard simplifying assumption that
economists often make. 3.
Premise 4 is often denied. People claim that a system with a lot of
inequality (i.e., capitalism) will have more income to distribute than a
system with more equality. Despite the fact that these premises may not all
be completely accurate, they are probably close enough to the truth to show
that utilitarians tend to favor equality over inequality. A Simple Way to Put the Essence of This Argument: "People who have a
lot of income get less utility from each dollar than those who have little income.
So the best way to maximize utility of income is to give more to those who
have less. In other words, utilitarianism has a tendency toward equality on
income." Case for
class discussion: "To Kill a Mockingbird" (without Gregory Peck). You live
in a small southern town in 1960,
where a black man has been accused of raping a white woman. He is arrested,
although the evidence against him is very weak. You work as a janitor at the
jailhouse, and you are the only person there besides the prisoner. The jail
is surrounded by a lynch mob which will soon break down the door. You have
two choices: (1) Leave by a second-story window, in which case the guy will
be lynched. (2) Unlock the gun case and give the prisoner a gun to defend
himself, which he is asking for. Since the mob will figure out that you have
helped him, you won't be able to get away, either. It is unlikely that
anything that you can do will prevent the lynching, and if you give the
prisoner a gun (and use one yourself) several members of the mob will be
killed. Assume: (A) whatever happens will be widely known.
(B) Lynching has an enormously terrorizing and intimidating influence on southern
blacks (and on many whites as well), and helps maintain segregation and
inequality, lowers wages of blacks and prevents their participating in
politics, etc. What is the
right thing to do, according to utilitarianism? What is the right thing to do
in your own view? |