Wednesday, July 14, 2021

Utilitarianism is Communism

"To each according to their need." ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Utilitarianism says that everyone should get what they want according to how much they want it, and regardless of all other considerations. (Such as property rights.) That's communism. Great work, communists.

Ever since the Owenites (pre-dating Marx, naturally) no communist has tried to be honest. They realized communism sounds dumb on paper to anyone older than about 5. They think the peasants and workers need to be scammed for their own good, of course, rather than that their stupid ideas sound idiotic. 

Though speaking of pre-dating Marx, utilitarianism pre-dates the Owenites by a wide margin. "Unlike other forms of consequentialism, such as egoism and altruism, utilitarianism considers the interests of all humans equally." Yup. It's Fascism. Fundamentalist egalitarianism.

Communism might be vaguely workable if nobody lied. Utilitarianism is exactly the same - reference the utility monster. One person claiming that not having all the money in the world hurts them more than you can imagine and that anything less than slavish devotion gives them massive traumatic breakdowns... Huh. Sound familiar to anyone?


In case you're still not sure, utilitarianism is irresponsible. On one extreme you worry about the well-being of yourself and your vassals, and everyone else is responsible for themselves. On the other you worry about the well-being of all conscious agents - even bugs, sometimes even grass. The latter is also known as attempted world domination. Literally Palpatine-tier evil empire shit. Utilitarianism: "What's this [none of my business] you speak of? Meddling busybodies are obviously the best kind of person." Actually Palpatine is starting to sound quite appealing by comparison. Palpatine >> Jeremy Bentham, Peter Singer, John Rawls. He's at the very least not a fuckin' communist.


That said, once you've limited your considerations to your vassals, customers and other non-telescopic targets, utilitarianism can be a decent shortcut. E.g. within a loving family utilitarianism is fine, because lies get exposed due to living in close proximity, so nobody can play the utility monster card. (Ideally they're loving enough that nobody tries lying anyway.) That said, it's solidly conceivable that there's a better principle that utilitarianism even under its ideal conditions. Hence the term [shortcut].

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