Since I wrote "the book" on these questions, my position has been evolving. Here is how I see it now. There are at least three general "modern" value systems (modern in the sense that they do not rely on local traditions for validation), personal utility/well-being, social justice, and substantive well-being (e.g. the lists produced by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum). Each is capable of being defined rigorously and, if not measured rigorously, at least measured up to the limit imposed by known distortions. Any rounded view of what it is we want to achieve in this world should give at least some weight to all three of these, recognizing that there are often conflicts between them. I've written a few papers developing this perspective in the context of occupational safety and health policy. Really, you could pick any other aspect of the political economy and do pretty much the same thing. I began by trying to critique the NCE obsession with utility uber alles, but now I think that any monolithic approach is seriously flawed. Peter Brad De Long wrote: > >The underlying assumptions in this discourse make no sense to me. I > >made a number > >of comments re Brad's stuff but there was no response. > > Just a few random notes. > > 1) What is utility? > > 2) Is utility measurable in cardinal terms? > > 3) Are interpersonal comparisons of utility possible? > > Well, we make them all the time: any government policy--any political > program--makes such interpersonal utility comparisons. > > I myself don't think that Benthamite utility exists. But I do think > that it is useful for thinking about distributional questions to > suppose that it does exist--and that people try to maximize it. > > This is a matter of taste, I agree. But it seems to me that going > down the non-utility road ultimately traps you into a language of > "rights" that can become very inhumane, or risks giving too little > weight to the preferences that people express... > > Brad DeLong
