- Okay.
So, now let's think about
how we're going
to actually evaluate facts.
So, we've talked about ways
of measuring poverty.
We've talked about ways
of measuring income inequality
or income mobility.
And that sort of a scientific
task, how we measure things,
now let's think
about evaluations.
So, here we're getting into 
the realm of sort of
philosophy and politics,
and that kind of stuff.
And I think sort
of the default utilitarian,
the default way
that economists are most likely
to look at the world is
what's called
the utilitarian framework.
So, utilitarianism
comes about sort
of in the late 1700s
and early 1800s,
about the same time
that economics is being born.
And the basic idea
of utilitarianism,
and there's a couple of 
different variants, here,
is maximize
average happiness,
which sounds very sensible.
And sort of very
sensible and simple,
and let's just do that. And 
why wouldn't we do that?
When we actually go and 
start doing this,
some unexpected
problems arise.
The first one is, basically,
how do you measure happiness?
So, that's sort of an 
implementation problem.
How do we do that?
There's sort of
some deeper problems,
which, essentially, do we
treat happiness the same
across individuals?
Even if we could
measure a certain
individual's happiness,
suppose there is one person
who sort of either really,
really happy
about things or really,
really unhappy about things,
and other people are little
bit more even-keeled,
are we saying that the
happiness of the person
who is sort of emotionally
volatile counts
for more than the person who's
a little bit
more emotionally stable,
I guess you'd call it.
And basically, yeah, if we're 
looking at utilitarianism,
we would say yes.
The people who don't
care that much
we shouldn't take
their welfare into account
as much as the people
who really care a lot.
I think utilitarianism
also makes what is right
a little bit more dependent
upon social scientific facts
than we're really
comfortable with.
And what do I mean by that?
Suppose it were the case.
I'm not saying it is the case,
but suppose it were the case
that a 1950s society
where husbands were primary
breadwinners
and women stayed at home
and raised kids was--
made people happier, on average.
Maybe it made the women unhappy,
but maybe the men were 
really happy,
and maybe it was really 
good for children
to have stable home lives,
and so on and so forth.
Well, if it maximizes 
average happiness
to restrict women's activities,
then a utilitarian's 
going to say,
well, then that's what we
should do, because we need
to maximize average happiness.
Utilitarianism also doesn't
really have a good way
of worrying about things
like fairness or justice.
The extent to which there's
fairness or justice is, well,
everyone's feelings are
taken equally into account,
at least insofar as they have
the equal intensity of feeling.
So, utilitarianism doesn't
sort of get into questions
of do people deserve
their economic rewards?
Or do they not?
Are there things like
basic rights, or not?
Utilitarianism basically
says everything comes down
to just this one principle,
and if something doesn't serve
that one principle, it's not
really directly relevant.
So, I think utilitarianism has 
something important to say,
and I think we would want
to give utilitarian
considerations some weight.
We wouldn't want to say we
should pay any attention
to whether or not
an action or a policy
impacts peoples' average level
of happiness at all,
but I think it really
oversimplifies and takes out
of consideration a lot
of things that are really,
really important to us.
So, that is utilitarianism.
