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Measures which focus on happiness instead of GDP or wealth can easily fall into the trap of narrow utilitarianism, the capabilities approach is more complete in that sense.
Measures which focus on happiness instead of GDP or wealth can easily fall into the trap of narrow utilitarianism
Miguel also mentions "utility" in a comment above. Are you referring to the same thing? What exactly do you mean by "utlitarianism"? Truth unfolds in time through a communal process.
Utilitarianism is a theory of ethics which lends itself to being reduced to "maximising utility". Utility has a technical meaning in economics and decision theory. Those whom the Gods wish to destroy They first make mad. -- Euripides
I would add that the technical economic concept of 'utility' has its roots in utilitarian ethical theory.
What I still want to do is moderate this 'technical measure' distinction. Utility as it is used in economics does contain all kinds of philosophical assumptions about mindstates, etc. You can't talk about the declining marginal utility of consumption without making this utility partly a subjective measure of gratification, for instance.
In probability theory and decision theory the St. Petersburg paradox describes a particular lottery game (sometimes called St. Petersburg Lottery) that leads to a random variable with infinite expected value, i.e. infinite expected payoff, but would nevertheless be considered to be worth only a very small amount of money. The St. Petersburg paradox is a classical situation where a naïve decision theory (which takes only the expected value into account) would recommend a course of action that no (real) rational person would be willing to take. The paradox can be resolved when the decision model is refined via the notion of marginal utility or by taking into account the finite resources of the participants. The paradox is named from Daniel Bernoulli's presentation of the problem and his solution, published in 1738 in the Commentaries of the Imperial Academy of Science of Saint Petersburg (Bernoulli 1738). However, the problem was invented by Daniel's cousin Nicolas Bernoulli who first stated it in a letter to Rémond de Montmort from 9th of September 1713.
The paradox is named from Daniel Bernoulli's presentation of the problem and his solution, published in 1738 in the Commentaries of the Imperial Academy of Science of Saint Petersburg (Bernoulli 1738). However, the problem was invented by Daniel's cousin Nicolas Bernoulli who first stated it in a letter to Rémond de Montmort from 9th of September 1713.
I agree. Bernoulli himself said:
"There is no doubt that a gain of one thousand ducats is more significant to the pauper than to a rich man though both gain the same amount."
And Gabriel Cramer, a few years before Bernoulli, refers to the role of "good sense":
"the mathematicians estimate money in proportion to its quantity, and men of good sense in proportion to the usage that they may make of it."
I am not sure what you mean by "narrow utilitarianism" as opposed to "utilitarianism" tout court. But isn't the policy approach that you and I agree on (as opposed to the "marketing" approach I am suggesting to replace "GDP" with some other unitary notion like HDI or median PPP income) just another form of utilitarianism as well, to wit, "negative utilitarianism"? Truth unfolds in time through a communal process.
What I personally meant by a narrow utilitarianism is a utilitarianism which uses a methodological individualism to form a societal calculus of happiness (unqualified, in the sense of Bentham), of which the maximation is taken to be the end-all of decision-making (individual as well as collective).
However, until we come up with truly a "complete"/multi-dimensional approach or mindset to replace the GDP/DJI-oriented mindset, and until people are ready to make such a drastic switch to such a different mindset, would it not be helpful to find some transitional position where we allow people to continue working with an easily graspable, easily comparable single number, like PPP median income or, better, HDI, to start to introduce such "revolutionary" notions as including fairness, socioeconomic equality, freedom from ignorance, freedom from government oppression, and so on, beyond mere GDP? Truth unfolds in time through a communal process.
These don't provide the basis for a unitary ranking but can be used as an overview. Might be an idea for a diary, actually (I probably won't have the time to do that properly until next weekend, though).
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