Justice_ What's the Right Thing to Do_ - Michael Sandel [19]
They all know it is there, all the people of Omelas… They all know that it has to be there… [T]hey all understand that their happiness, the beauty of their city, the tenderness of their friendships, the health of their children,… even the abundance of their harvest and the kindly weathers of their skies, depend wholly on this child’s abominable misery. … If the child were brought up into the sunlight out of the vile place, if it were cleaned and fed and comforted, that would be a good thing, indeed; but if it were done, in that day and hour all the prosperity and beauty and delight of Omelas would wither and be destroyed. Those are the terms.8
Are those terms morally acceptable? The first objection to Bentham’s utilitarianism, the one that appeals to fundamental human rights, says they are not—even if they lead to a city of happiness. It would be wrong to violate the rights of the innocent child, even for the sake of the happiness of the multitude.
Objection 2: A Common Currency of Value
Utilitarianism claims to offer a science of morality, based on measuring, aggregating, and calculating happiness. It weighs preferences without judging them. Everyone’s preferences count equally. This nonjudgmental spirit is the source of much of its appeal. And its promise to make moral choice a science informs much contemporary economic reasoning. But in order to aggregate preferences, it is necessary to measure them on a single scale. Bentham’s idea of utility offers one such common currency.
But is it possible to translate all moral goods into a single currency of value without losing something in the translation? The second objection to utilitarianism doubts that it is. According to this objection, all values can’t be captured by a common currency of value.
To explore this objection, consider the way utilitarian logic is applied in cost-benefit analysis, a form of decision-making that is widely used by governments and corporations. Cost-benefit analysis tries to bring rationality and rigor to complex social choices by translating all costs and benefits into monetary terms—and then comparing them.
The benefits of lung cancer
Philip Morris, the tobacco company, does big business in the Czech Republic, where cigarette smoking remains popular and socially acceptable. Worried about the rising health care costs of smoking, the Czech government recently considered raising taxes on cigarettes. In hopes of fending off the tax increase, Philip Morris commissioned a cost-benefit analysis of the effects of smoking on the Czech national budget. The study found that the government actually gains more money than it loses from smoking. The reason: although smokers impose higher medical costs on the budget while they are alive, they die early, and so save the government considerable sums in health care, pensions, and housing for the elderly. According to the study, once the “positive effects” of smoking are taken into account—including cigarette tax revenues and savings due to the premature deaths of smokers—the net gain to the treasury is $147 million per year.9
The cost-benefit analysis proved to be a public relations disaster for Philip Morris. “Tobacco companies used to deny that cigarettes killed people,” one commentator wrote. “Now they brag about it.” 10 An antismoking group ran newspaper ads showing the foot of a cadaver in a morgue with a $1,227 price tag attached to the toe, representing the savings to the Czech government of each smoking-related death. Faced with public outrage and ridicule, the chief executive of Philip Morris apologized, saying the study showed “a complete and unacceptable disregard of basic human