Arrow's Impossibility Theorem is commonly understood to invoke a dictatorship that is somehow lurking within our voting arrangements. A well-recognized statement of the theorem is that "any constitution that respects transitivity, independence of irrelevant alternatives and unanimity is a...

Utilitarianism can be misplaced or ambiguous. As a prescription for individual behaviour, the injunction to seek the greatest good for the greatest number is misplaced because there remains a domain of life where, within the bounds of law and custom, one is free to act as selfishly or as...

A utilitarian measure of economic growth combines changes in the distribution of income with changes in real income per person to show how much better off people are becoming over time. It is the rate of growth of the dollar value of average utility of income. As such , it is seen differently by...