Article by Leon Shepherd

We have covered the basics of public policy analysis here. Now we are going to cover some of the perspectives.

This article will cover the more activist perspectives; utilitarianism and Rawls, as well as provide graphical representation towards their policies, and some reviews, critiques, and benefits to each ideology. In a future article, we shall cover the more Libertarian Nozick’s Minimal Government, and the Thaler-Sunstein ‘Nudge’ Theory.

Doing so, you will be able to consider whether a public policy is good or bad for society, as well as being able to define mathematically (in at least three perspectives) said ‘goodness’.

Why would we need to be able to think about public policy? With the upcoming British and U.S. elections, it is good and helpful to be able to really think about policies? Does immigration help or hurt the working class? Would the stoppage of deficit spending actually help the common man? What are the actual effects of money printing on the consumption of the common man in China?

Maths is good for a simple reason; a number has no bias. The way it is collected may, but evidence is generally unbiased. Learning how to interpret these numbers, and learning the strengths and weaknesses of your biases or priorities, will help you be more intellectually honest, as well as informed. In a time of great deceit from our politicians, it is important that we try to see as honestly as possible.

Utilitarianism

The rule for utilitarianism is simply written:

The greatest good for the greatest number of people.

However, it is not simply applied and it immediately raises two important questions: 1) What is “Good”? 2) Who is included in the “greatest number”?

There are generally three main principles to utilitarianism:



Welfarism: Individual utility, or welfare, is the basis for assigning an ethical value for the utilitarian. E.g. You have less money, ergo, you are less happy than a person with more money.

Sum Ranking: Society should determine the overall net benefits of a policy to society by adding the utilities of all affected individuals. E.g. If 1,000 people are made better off, and 999 are made worse off, and all by equal amounts, we can say that this policy is a net benefit.

Consequentialism: The ends justify the means. E.g. It’s okay to go through hell if the other side is sufficiently good enough.



Even beyond that, there is further divisions of utilitarianism:



Restricted Utilitarianism: General rules should be applied to society for maximum utility; once applied, all individuals must use it even if individual utility suffers. E.g. it is good for society to pay taxes for education; it may not benefit someone individually, but as it is applied to all in society, they must abide and seek to maximise their utility with this restriction.

Extreme Utilitarianism: Every circumstance is different, even applied rules are not binding. E.g. In the above scenario, if it would benefit the individual to seek to avoid paying taxes, then they must do so through whatever measures they believe maximise their utility.



There are, of course, weaknesses for utilitarianism:

1) Consequentialism can often overstep itself, even human rights. E.g. It is worth purging the Jews in Europe to make Nazi Germany more powerful.

2) To take above further, better few suffer extremely to benefit the many. E.g. It is worth purging the capitalists to further the rights of the workers.

3) Rank-sum means that gains to the poor are off-set by losses from the rich. E.g. I give £100 from this guy to this guy. One has gained £100. One has lost £100. Ergo, the end result is 0.

However, only if taken as gross. If taken as a percentage, it certainly doesn’t. E.g.£100 from Bill Gates won’t bother him, but could make or break a poor family’s budget.

4) Welfarism puts material wealth as central to happiness/utility. E.g. A family with less money/assets/wealth/income/etc is less happy than a family with more money/assets/wealth/income/etc.

5) Utility isn’t easily measured. E.g. how do you measure how happy a family is because their country is not a war? How do you measure the difference in the same family in differing circumstances without actually changing those circumstances and testing it?

6) Rank-Sum removes individuality; everyone is the same, and everyone is a mass of humanity when counted together. Individual differences do not matter.

Utilitarian Graphical Representation

The formula looks like this: