Position
Utilitarian Distribution
A distribution is just when it maximizes aggregate well-being across everyone affected.
Classification
- Position level
- specific
- Domains
- Political Philosophy
Overview
Applied to distribution, utilitarianism has no independent interest in the shape of the outcome: goods should go wherever they add most to the total, counting everyone's welfare equally and nobody's twice. Such egalitarian pull as it has comes not from any commitment to equality but from diminishing marginal utility — a given sum ordinarily does more good for someone with little than for someone with much.
That derivation is also the objection. Because equality is only ever instrumental here, the theory endorses inequality wherever the arithmetic favours it, and it treats the boundaries between persons as though they carried no weight, allowing a loss to one to be cancelled by smaller gains spread across many others.
Position on
Held by traditions
- Classical Utilitarianism
Question scope: Distributive Justice
Incompatible positions
- Entitlement Theory
Question scope: Distributive Justice
- Rawls's Difference Principle
Question scope: Distributive Justice