The Utilitarian Fallacy

The current crises in the UK – economic, political, financial and social – have created an opportunity to re-examine the social contract and the functioning of civil society. Many people have commented upon these crises, their causes and consequences and there have been many attempts to theorize the problem in terms of market failure or governance failure. For some it is even the failure of capitalism. These people tend to advocate a change to the system – generally to another of their personal preference. Others have been more concerned to allocate blame, again according to their personal prejudices. Still others would say that it is an inevitable consequence of greed, ignorance and irresponsibility. And an important aspect is to apportion blame. To date many people have discussed what purport to be aspects of the problem but in reality are just symptoms. The real cause has not been identified and there is a danger that the symptoms will be treated without the cause and the malaise will therefore resurface in the future. This paper examines the roots of economic society and the unintended consequences stemming from the good intentions of John Stuart Mill in developing the ideas of Jeremy Bentham. This paper will show that the resulting Utilitarian philosophy is the root cause of the problem because it has legitimated the amoral abuse of power while enabling it to masquerade as democracy