I did a storm on “utility” in neoclassical welfare economics recently so maybe don’t need to have another go at that just yet, but maybe this week I can talk about the peculiar habit of conflating “utility” with money or economic power in bad economics in the conservative style?
“Utility” in neoclassical welfare economics does not equate to money. One can compare money across individuals. One person has $5; one has $10. Interpersonal “utility” comparisons are either undefined or impossible in neoclassical welfare economics depending on the interpretation of utility used. This means an argument of the form, person X must get more “utility” from good G than person Y because person X is able and wiling to pay more for it, is incorrect in real neoclassical welfare economics. That’s an external ethical proposition relating in part to economic power. It’s fine to add such an argument as an external ethical proposition relating to so-called “equity” concerns, that is, addressing the ethical issues relating to resolving interpersonal conflicts of preferences as over scarce resources; however, it should be explicitly stated as such. If one tries to introduce it on the sly, associating it with the relatively less controversial issues associated with the sort of “utility” used in neoclassical welfare economics, a peculiar, idiosyncratic sort that cannot rightly be used in interpersonal ethics, one is doing a bait and switch. A rich man building a castle on Mars while a poor man starves in a forest is not justified on the basis the rich man gets more “utility” (as defined in neoclassical welfare economics) from his castle than the poor man gets from a nice dinner. That’s an interpersonal utility comparison.
Much of bad economics in the conservative style involves rhetorical stratagems and devices, word play, equivocations and conflations, designed to suppress honest expression, discussion, evaluation of the ethical propositions needed to go beyond “utility” as used in neoclassical welfare economics. If you can’t take the time to study actual neoclassical welfare economics or the rhetoric of anti-democracy bad economics in the conservative style, extensively used on the right, at least understand neoclassical welfare economics can never tell you if any resource should go to person A or person B. To decide that sort of thing, one must go beyond the normative argument presented in real neoclassical welfare economics. One must introduce external, exogenous normative or ethical propositions relating to interpersonal ethics, and the question then becomes whose ethical views should matter? If one can understand that much, then one may come to understand one important rationale for democracy in the proposition such controversial issues should be decided by the people, the governed, not handed down from on high by technocratic or theocratic Ethical Arbiters, even those one agrees.
