Let’s see how a utilitarian dictator would arrange things for Charles, Elizabeth, and Mary. One heroic assumption that utilitarians make is that you can actually compare happiness and misery across different people. In reality, brain scans are making this easier to do, but it’s still a lot of guesswork. Let’s suppose that this utilitarian dictator has eight oranges to distribute. The table shows the utility that each person receives from their first orange (a lot), but extra oranges give less extra happiness (oranges give “diminishing marginal utility,” in economic jargon).
Utility per orange | Charles | Elizabeth | Mary |
---|---|---|---|
1st | 2,000 | 1,200 | 2,400 |
2nd | 280 | 1,000 | 400 |
3rd | 40 | 800 | 200 |
4th | 2 | 600 | 100 |
So, if the dictator wants to maximize the sum of Charles’s, Elizabeth’s, and Mary’s utilities, then Charles will get oranges, Elizabeth will get oranges and Mary will get oranges.