rule, act, equal treatment

• different levels of deference/defaulting to other principles e.g. rule of meeting needs, social rights etc

proportionate universalism (Marmot, public health inequalities)

Differences between groups
p237
Single people usually find themselves outside of this statutory framework in England as they are generally considered not to be in priority need. While there is insufficient space to pursue it here, there is an interesting utilitarian debate to be had on why homeless adults with children are given rehousing priority over single homeless adults, particularly given that the latter more often have specific vulnerabilities and support needs (see below). The most likely explanation is that children are perceived as more ‘deserving’ of help than adults because they are less able to fend for themselves, and therefore society perceives a moral responsibility for their welfare and derives utility from seeing them housed (see Fitzpatrick & Stephens, 1999).

p239
There are two linked grounds on which the fairness of the homelessness system has been questioned: scepticism about statutorily homeless households’ ‘long-term housing needs’ being in fact any greater than those of other housing applicants; and suspicion that some may manufacture a homeless status in order to gain unwarranted priority in social housing allocations...

If either of these propositions holds then there is disutility associated with the statutory system because there will be systematic sub-optimal housing allocations which fail to prioritise those in greatest need, and thus to maximise overall welfare

Conclusion

p247
With regard to the first set of objections, it is difficult to counter the proposition that there is some intrinsic moral hazard within the structure of these homelessness provisions. However, a distinction must be drawn between the presence of a perverse incentive and whether such an incentive is acted upon in practice. The English family homelessness survey uncovered no evidence of the type of widespread abuse of the homelessness system that would justify bringing its overall fairness (legitimacy) into question. On the contrary, all of the indications are that it addresses the main ‘social evil’ that it was intended to remedy, i.e. the ‘structural’ housing needs of low-income households who lack the means to secure alternative accommodation when they are confronted with a crisis such as relationship

p247

With regard to the effectiveness of the statutory system, the most important overall finding of the survey was that there appeared to be significant net improvements in the quality of life of homeless families after they had received assistance under this statutory system. Given their overall social and economic disadvantage, this can be viewed as contributing to an important welfare gain. While the largest net improvement was reported by those families who had moved into settled housing, even those still in temporary accommodation (most of it self-contained) tended to report a higher quality of life than when they were living in their ‘last settled accommodation’. The explanation seems to be the statutory system’s capacity to not only protect low-income families from ‘literal homelessness’, but also to move them from stressful personal and accommodation circumstances into more appropriate housing environments, which particularly benefits the children in these families.

Mendus 2002: 7-9
Famously, Rawls rejects the utilitarian suggestion that impartiality is to be attained by taking each person to count as one because, he says, such a procedure undermines the separateness of persons and reduces impartiality to impersonality. Crudely, his complaint is that utilitarianism, so interpreted, can legitimize sacrificing some people in the name of greater overall benefit. When this happens the losers do not, in fact, count as one. They are not treated equally, but may, in some circumstances, be sacrificial lambs on the altar of the greatest good. As he puts it: ‘what the (p.8) principle of utility asks is that . . . we accept the greater advantages of others as sufficient reason for lower expectations over the whole course of our life. This is surely an extreme demand. In fact, when society is conceived as a system of co‐operation designed to advance the good of its members, it seems quite incredible that some should be expected, on the basis of political principles, to accept lower prospects of life for the sake of others’ (Rawls 1971: 178).

It is for a similar reason that Brian Barry also rejects the so‐ called ‘impartial spectator’ interpretation of impartiality and, following Scanlon, urges instead an interpretation which emphasizes reasonable agreement: ‘principles of justice that satisfy the [reasonable agreement] condition are impartial’ he writes ‘because they capture a certain kind of equality: all those affected have to be able to feel that they have done as well as they could reasonably hope to’ (Barry 1995: 7). For both Barry and Rawls, the best way of understanding impartialist commitment to the equality of all human beings is via the concept of reasonable agreement.

Political impartialism, then, is informed by a concern for and commitment to equality: some (for example, some utilitarians) think that this commitment is best honoured by taking each to count for one, and summing the overall benefit

Best state of affairs - maximising pleasure or minimising pain
p73-74

Utilitarianism is the best known strand within the ‘consequentialist’ school of moral philosophy which
avers, in contradistinction to the deontological rights-based theories just discussed, that the morally
best course of action is that which brings about the most desirable or ‘valuable’ state of affairs. For
utilitarians, this valuable state of affairs comprises the maximisation of human ‘utility’ or ‘welfare’ –
‘the greatest happiness of the greatest number’ in Jeremy Bentham’s famous formulation. In modern political philosophy, ‘utility’ is often defined not as a psychic state of mind (happiness) but as
(informed) preference-satisfaction, though some utilitarians have focussed on other key sources of
value, including pleasure, desire, self-interest, and wellbeing (Goodin, 1993). Some have sought
instead to put the emphasis on minimising pain, suffering and unhappiness, so called ‘negative
utilitarianism’ (Smart and Williams, 1973).

Intuitive appeal - tacit background
p74

As a moral code, utilitarianism has a strong intuitive appeal and has been hugely influential in welfare
economics and in other public policy spheres across the western world. Indeed Kymlicka, 2002
comments that “in our society utilitarianism operates as a kind of tacit background against which
other theories have to assert and defend themselves” (p.10; see also Rawls, 1971/1999). Utilitarianism
requires ‘equal weight’ to be given to each person’s interests (Kymlicka, 2002), with the concept of
‘declining marginal utility’ (that a person will derive less utility from the second unit of a good than
from the first) also serving to reinforce this egalitarian dimension, by weighting more heavily the
gains (and losses) of those who have least (Goodin, 1993; Gabriel 2017). The idea that "urgent claims
should be met first" can be understood as a basic component of utilitarian morality (Gabriel, 2017,
p.460).

Criticisms
p74

However, intense criticism has focused on the aggregative nature of utilitarianism, with critics from a
wide variety of perspectives arguing that it fails to respect the dignity and separateness of persons, and
violates individual rights in pursuance of (varying interpretations of) the ‘greater good’ (see
Kymlicka, 2002; Smart and Williams, 1973; Goodin, 1993). Robert Nozick (1974) and Ronald
Dworkin (1977) have criticised utilitarianism in this vein, though with very different ideas about the
kinds of inviolable rights people have. Indeed, Rawls’ (1971/1999) celebrated theory of ‘justice as
fairness’, and its deployment of the famous ‘veil of ignorance’ behind which the principles of the just
society would be determined by rational actors, was framed explicitly as a critique of utilitarianism.
According to Rawls, people would not agree to utilitarian principles which fail “to take seriously the
distinction between persons” (p.163) and endorse ‘sacrificial’ policies that harm some in order to
benefit others. A further significant objection to utilitarianism is that it oversimplifies morality,
reducing all human values and objectives to a single scale (Macintyre, 1981/2007), and that it is based
on shallow economistic reasoning, tending to elevate material prosperity above all other societal
goals, including the fair distribution of income and wealth (see Kymlicka, 2002; Goodin, 1993; and
below).

Egalitarianism and prioritarianism
p74-75

However, utilitarianism is arguably a badly misunderstood moral theory, often caricatured by its
opponents (Goodin, 1993), but also sometimes poorly defended and explained by its proponents
(Kristjansson, 2005 and 2002). Take for example the perception that utilitarian thinking is necessarily
closely aligned with ‘neoliberal’ economic policies that favour a wealthy elite. On the contrary,
logically built into utilitarianism is a “rationale for a more rather than less egalitarian distribution of
goods and resources” (p.247), given the ‘prioritarianism’ implied be declining marginal utility, and
the fact that the ‘privileged’ elite served by such an economic order will by definition be exceedingly
small compared to the majority disadvantaged by it (Kymlicka, 2002). Furthermore, utilitarianism is
emphatically only concerned with material prosperity and wealth insofar as it pays dividends for
human welfare, not as an end in itself (Goodin, 1993). For example, utilitarian ideas are currently
finding voice via the ‘effective altruist’ movement, with calls on those wishing ‘to make a difference’
to ‘do good better’ (MacAskill, 2015; Singer, 2015). Far from fuelling conspicuous consumption,
these ideas have prompted effective altruists to engage in what would usually be considered
supererogatory acts, like donating large proportions (e.g. 50%) of their salary on an ongoing basis to
demonstrably effective global charities. As Fitzpatrick and Stephens (1999) note, utilitarianism is “open to some obvious objections… But few would question that welfare maximisation should form a
significant component of public policy” (p.420).

Considerations for application of util in practice
p75

There are a range of potential utilitarian arguments in favour of conduct conditionality, some of which
relate to the financial costs to society as a whole (and taxpayers in particular) of, for instance, having
large numbers of people receiving welfare benefits (Paz-Fuchs, 2008). There are also utilitarian
arguments in favour of intervening to tackle, for example, anti-social behaviour in order to protect the
well-being of those directly affected by such behaviour (Fitzpatrick and Johnsen, 2009). Furthermore,
overall societal welfare may increase if sufficient numbers of citizens derive enough utility from
seeing welfare benefits distributed subject under conditions that they view as ‘fair’ (see below; and
Miller, 1992; Goodin, 2002; Taylor Gooby, 2005).
The fundamental point of relevance here is that, as a consequentialist theory, the strength or weakness
of the utilitarian case for welfare conditionality turns largely on the empirical questions considered in
the last chapter. Can conduct-focussed conditions on the receipt of welfare be shown in fact to
increase the overall sum of human welfare? As demonstrated in Chapter 5, evidence for the positive
impacts of welfare conditionality is very often inconsistent, contradictory, or lacking. Current data
suggests a small number of examples of conditional programmes – some CCTs, immunization
focused conditionality in Australian and intensive ‘family intervention projects’ tackling anti-social
behaviour in the UK – that appear to achieve tangible benefits for those targeted and society at large,
but our review of evidence far more frequently backs a utilitarian scepticism regarding the ethicality
of conditionality.
Moreover, any potential utility gains associated with conditionality have to be weighed against the
negative impacts that such policies may have on those directly targeted – for instance the stress,
material hardship and even destitution that may be experienced by sanctioned jobseekers and their
families – and on those whose wellbeing is negatively affected by observing or dealing with these
negative impacts (e.g. welfare rights advisers, the ‘sympathetic public’ etc.). The ‘disutility’
associated with seeing “innocent third parties” (Deacon, 2004, p.916) harmed by conditionality in
particular must be taken into account, and could be sizable given the moral concern usually reserved
for children. Furthermore, declining marginal utility implies that losses to the (typically) low-income
groups in receipt of benefits should carry greater moral force than any gains of a similar magnitude to
the rest of the population. There are also a range of financial – and sometimes sizable – costs
associated with the administration of welfare conditionality that must also be weighed in the balance.
All of these points serve to undermine the utilitarian case for conditionality in some areas of welfare
policy (and indeed provides significant ammunition for its critics), but depending on the empirical
facts, the utilitarian rationale for conditionality may well be strong in other instances. If the evidence
clearly demonstrates substantial utilitarian gains, especially for vulnerable groups, the burden of proof
might be argued to be on conditionality’s critics to establish why a conditional approach is
nevertheless subject to moral opprobrium.

Overview
p124

The outline of the article is as follows. First I present two general arguments
favouring market solutions. The procedural argument sees the market as a manifes-
tation of the right to individual freedom. The instrumental argument sees the market
as a means to maximize consumer utility.
Then I discuss four possible counter-arguments that may favour political inter-
vention. The first argument is that individual freedom may not be an absolute value,
in particular not in housing. The second argument is that an alternative procedural
value, favouring non-market solutions, may be democracy (defined broadly as poli-
tical equality). The third argument is that, due to the specific character of housing
as a commodity, market solutions may not by necessity lead to maximum utility.
The fourth argument is that housing provision should aim at other values than
consumer utility, such as equality, justice, needs or social rights.

Abstract p123
The normative question of markets and politics in housing is discussed in relation to theories of welfare economics and political philosophy. The point of departure is a general presumption in favour of market solutions, based on both procedural ("negative freedom") and instrumental ("maximum utility") arguments. Four types of counter-arguments are discussed against the background of the specific conditions of housing. The procedural arguments based on negative freedom or democracy are not found to be conclusive. The existence of transaction costs and externalities makes it questionable whether market solutions in housing could maximize consumer utility. Alternative values to utility have certain paternalistic implications, though political intervention may sometimes be justified in terms of physiological needs, positive freedom or social citizenship. From an empirical point of view the presumption in favour of market solutions may still be defensible, since housing provision in the Western world is ultimately based on market contracts and not on state allocation.

Sen and consumer utility
p125
In his discussion of the moral standing of the market, Sen (19856: 2) distinguishes between two different lines of arguments. Markets may be defended in terms of their "consequent good" or in terms of their "antecedent freedom". According to Sen, most defences of the market are instrumental, i.e. they are expressed in terms of the results achieved. Markets are expected to work "efficiently", to serve our "interests", to be "mutually beneficial", to deliver "the goods", to contribute to "utility", or to serve as the "invisible hand". They may also make people "free to choose", which might be seen as valuable in itself (Sen, 19856: 2-3). In my interpretation all these values, with the possible exception of freedom to choose, can be reduced to individual consumer utility in the established economic meaning of "the value of a function that represents a person's prefer- ences" (cf. Broome, 1991: 3).

• contrasted to procedural (freedom-based) defences of the market e.g. Nozick
  
  

p126
...Sen's conclusion is that the value of the market cannot be divorced from the value of its results

Problems with the pareto model
p129
Another problem is that such an equilibrium might in fact not represent the Paretian version of social efficiency. The reason for that is the existence of technical market imperfections: externalities, collective goods, and economies of scale (cf. Wolf, 1988: 20-29). Wolf regards distributional inequity as a fourth type of market imperfection, but since most economists distinguish between questions of efficiency and questions of distribution, I prefer to discuss income distribution under the heading of "equality" below.
Externalities exist when the economic activity of one firm or one household affects the cost or utility of another economic unit, positively or negatively. The importance of externalities in housing is a well-established topic of theoretical discussion. Examples of negative externalities often given are obstructed views and destroyed open spaces. At the core of the debate on externalities in housing are, however, the presumedly positive external effects of slum clearance and desegrega- tion (see

Provision of decent housing
p129-130
the provision of decent housing to those who would otherwise live in ramshackle houses may contribute to the utility not only to recipients themselves, but to all members of society. In that case, housing provision in general—though not the single housing unit—could be regarded as a public good.

As a backdrop
p9
Rawls believes, rightly I think, that in our society utilitarianism operates as a kind of tacit background against which other theories have to assert and defend themselves.

p11
Utilitarianism provides a test to ensure that moral rules serve some useful function

p11
Utilitarianism's two attractions, then, are that it confirms to our intuition that human well-being matters, and to our intuition that moral rules must be tested for their consequences on human well-being.
And if accept these two points then utilitarianism seems to follow almost inevitably.

Welfare hedonism
p12

• experience or sensation of pleasure is the chief human good
• all other goods are means to that end
• objection of Nozick's experience machine

Non-hedonistic mental-state utility
p13

• argument against the hedonic account of utility: things worth doing and having in life are not all reducible to one mental state like happiness
• Nozick's experience machine objection still holds

Informed preferences p16

• welfare defined as the satisfaction of 'rational' or 'informed' preferences
• but this is vague, limited constraints on what can be conceived of as 'utility', hard to know what to promote on this view
• it drops the 'experience' requirement i.e. things (Hare's example is a spouse's adultery) can reduce an individual's utility even if they don't know about it
• but rational preferences about things which don't affect our conscious states (e.g. about what happens after our deaths) can produce complications
• very difficult to determine what increases welfare, let alone measure it

Consequentialism

• p17 weight given to preference can be unattractive: not all preferences ought to count the same, equal amounts of utility should not always have the same weight
• p20 Kymlicka argues there is something inherently unattractive about the utilitarian commitment to maximising utiltiy

Special relationships

• p21 Our intuitions tells us that there are such special obiigations, and that they should be fulfilled even if those to whom I am not especially obligated would benefit more
• p22 there is some special independent weight that ought to be givne, for example, to repayment of a loan etc

External preferences p36-37
One important distinction amongst kinds of preferences is that between 'personal' and 'external' preferences (Dworkin 1977: 234). Personal preferences are preferences about the goods, resources and opportunities etc. one wants available to oneself. External preferences concern the goods, resources and opportunities one wants available to others. External preferences are sometimes prejudiced

• e.g. racism, wanting some group to receive less
  
  

Does the existence of such preferences count as a moral reasons for denying those groups the relevant resources?

• rule utils sometimes argue that we would be better off in util terms from excluding those prefs from our everyday decision procedures, but this does not account for the deepest principles in util potentially giving grounds for allowing those preferences, giving them moral weight in its standard of rightness
• if the deepest principle is the egalitarian one, that everyone has equal standing and respect, then it seems inconsistent to count external preferences, because it implies that some groups may not be owed equal concern

p 40
This is important to Rawls: his view is that it is a defining feature of our sense of justice that 'interests requiring the violation of justice have no value', so the presence of illegitimate preferences 'cannot distort our claims upon one another'

Diminishing marginal utility
p36
the cases in which we can make one person very much happier without increasing general happiness are rare ones. The law of diminishing returns comes in here.

p62
The chief persuasive argument in favour of utilitarianism has been that the dictates of any deontological ethics will always, on some occasions, lead to the existence of misery that could, on utilitarian principles, have been prevented

5. Negative utilitarianism p28
   Karl Popper has suggested that we should concern ourselves not so much with the maximization of happiness as with the minimization of suffering. By 'suffering' we must understand misery involving actual pain, not just unhappiness.
   
   

p29
...has some unusual consequences e.g. it is possible to argue that a negative utilitarian would have to be in favour of exterminating the human race

p29-30
...Even though we may not be attracted to negative utilitarianism as an ultimate principle, we may concede that the injunction to 'worry about removing misery rather than about promoting happiness' has a good deal to recommend it as a subordinate rule of thumb. For in most cases we can do most for our fellow men by trying to remove their miseries. Moreover people will be less ready to agree on what goods they would like to be promoted than they will be to agree on what miseries should be avoided. Mill and Bentham might disagree on whether poetry should be preferred to pushpin, but they would agree that an occasional visit to the dentist is preferable to chronic toothache. While there are many positive evils in the world their is plenty of scope for co-operative effort among men who may nevertheless disagree to some extent as to what constitute positive goods.

p78
The first question for philosophy is not "do you agree with utilitarianism's answer?" but "do you really accept utilitarianism's way of looking at the question?"

Defining consequentialism
p79
Very roughly speaking, consequentialism is the doctrine that the moral value of any action always lies in its consequences, and that it is by reference to their consequences that actions, and indeed such things as institutions, laws and practices, are to be justified if they can be justified at all

p136
...a utilitarian is likely to think that the case for public utilitarianism is even stronger than that for private. For one thing, the decisions of government1 affect more persons, in the main, than private decisions. But, more than that, he is likely to feel that there is something in the nature of modern government (at least) which requires the utilitarian spirit. Private citizens might legitimately, if re- grettably, have religious beliefs or counter-utilitarian ideals, but government in a secular state must be secular, and must use a system of decision which is minimally committed beyond its intrinsic commitment to the welfare of its citizens. Thus utilitarianism can be seen almost as built into a contract of government.