Alternatives to Benthamesque normatives?

Garrett Hardin's essay, Tragedy of the Commons, revolves around a critique of the Bethamesque formula: the greatest good for the greatest number. Unfortunately, it fails on two counts: the first, that Hardin mistakes the meaning of the word "number", and the second, that Hardin is incorrect even when you stipulate to his "number." For the latter, Hardin assumes that humanity tends to increase exponentially, but we know that this is not the case since wealthier societies tend to level off and some ("Old" Europe) may even be in decline. After subtracting immigrants, the population of the US has leveled off. But it is the first error that I would like to address.

By "greatest number," Bentham means the largest portion of an existing population. He is not suggesting that we should try to maximize the number of people on Earth, and this is the strawman around which Hardin bases his case. As Hardin proceeds, he "shows" that the population cannot be maximized (a statement that probably doesn't mean what he thinks it does), and sets about then to describe the sub-optimal world as he has already found necessary.

I know there are lots of problems with utilitarianism, but it retains its inherent intuitive appeal. One problem is that it is difficult to add and subtract the results for everyone, so I prefer those actions that I perceive to result in the greatest good for the average person. Is that reasonable? What about alternatives? What about, for example, a person who judges the effect of policies for their effect on the least well-off in society rather than just the average members?

I think that the policies I prefer would minimize the number of poor (let's leave it at poor, though there may be worse fates). I could be wrong, but I think there is at least an argument to be made along those lines for the policies I prefer. On the other hand, people who concentrate on the effect of policies on the poor don't seem to give priority to minimizing the number of the poor, but rather to increasing the good for that group. One view concentrates on reducing the portion of the population with few "goods" (utilitarian, not economic), while the other concentrates on supplying goods to those that don't have any. Don't they both seek to maximize the greatest good for the greatest number?

Take for example the policy mix of workman's comp, welfare, and national health care. Those countries that have such entitlements claim to be free of poverty. Haven't they therefore used measures to alleviate the effects of poverty and achieved the goal sought by the other group? I don't think so. By many measures (Alm and Cox Exhibit 12, living space), many people (though not all) suffering from poverty in America are better off than the average person in those countries, especially after you compare apples to apples and consider the spending rather than the income of American poor. By that measure, we may not have many truly poor after all. Furthermore, the countries with those policies don't seem to be reducing the number of people dependent on those programs – to the contrary, they seem to be increasing. Unemployment in France, Germany, Sweden? In Arnold Kling's formulation, instead of reducing poverty by redistributing income, such programs tend to reduce income and redistribute poverty.

But the important question from my perspective is what things will look like 15 years or more from now. Tyler points out that if American growth rates had been 1% lower from 1870 to 1990, American GDP would be the same as Mexico's. He also asks what Sweden will look like in relation to America after many years in which American growth is higher than theirs. I believe that policies intended to reduce the amount of relative poverty actually make a country absolutely poor, especially when practiced for a long time or when taken to extremes. If they are absolutely poor, then the country as a whole may be relatively poor compared to other countries or compared to what it might have been like without such policies. When the country is absolutely poor, everyone tends to be equally poor.

It may also be worth clarifying another aspect to this debate: the fact that those who would like to alleviate poverty by eliminating it look for policies that do not require, or at least minimize, income transfers, while those who would like to alleviate the effects of poverty do so primarily by income transfers and secondarily by resisting trade and technological progress (the latter could still be considered a transfer: from foreign competitors and technological innovators to their domestic and more-labor-based competitors). Thus, poverty minimizers are also coercion minimizers, while poverty effect miminizers are not coercion averse (at least with respect to welfare policy).

Finally, it is frustrating to those of us on the poverty minimization side that we are told that we don't care, we are heartless, and so on, because we tend to take a longer look and favor the elimination of poverty over the alleviation of effects. This is not to suggest that some long-term policies won't have some short-term effects, or that some poverty activists don't favor policies that will reduce poverty. Education is widely perceived by both camps as a solution: the long termers would like to improve the education system by instilling motivations to innovate and to concentrate on results rather than process, while - as far as I can tell - the short termers would simply like more spending of any type on education.

I don't think I've covered any new ground here. I think that many authors have written extensively much better than I about these issues in many guises. Here are the line-ups as I see them:

View
Bentham applied to poverty	Increase the number of people with access to the "good"	Increase the amount of good accessible by those who have least
Coercion	averse	Not averse
Time horizon	Long term	Short term
Policy goals	growth	Minimize suffering
Education	Improve results through correct mix of incentives (competition, testing)	Increase funding
Trade	Free	Protectionist
Technological progress	Free	Subject to control, planning, approval

But I still haven't gotten around to the issue which started this: what do you call a normative prescription which judges policies on its effect on the least well off rather than on the average (my application) or the aggregate (Bentham's original formulation)? It's not necessarily utilitarian, though it could be in a way in which I am unaware. Here is what I mean:

Example 1, The Don't Call list: Since the poor don't have phones, this is a neutral policy. Don't care.

Example 2, Tax Cuts (any, not necessarily federal income): Since the poor don't pay taxes, and the wealthy do, and this is the fuel for the welfare state, oppose all tax cuts vigorously and support new and more taxes, even if 95% of all economists say they are beneficial.

Example 3, Social Security reform: Despite the fact that SS is regressive, despite the fact that everyone recognizes the system is headed for problems as the Boomers retire, etc., oppose any talk of reform- any! - because there might be some poor retirees who get some money out of it.

Now, there are good arguments to be made on both sides of tax cuts and SS reform, but the kind of people I am describing won't hear any of the pro arguments as a matter of principle. Their entry point to any debate is how it effects the poor, which is a non-starter with most politicians because they have to orient themselves to the broadest cross-section of their potential constituents - the proverbial average voter. I suppose this is Rawls' viewpoint, but he at least makes an attempt at appealing to utilitarians by saying that everyone would be better off vs. what they might have been if they had been born poor. This least-well-off viewpoint, though, doesn't even attempt that.

What would society look like if we elected a government based on this? I suspect it would look a lot like a communist state, where the justification for every arbitrary totalitarian act was its effect on the proletariat. Hey, the place has gone to shit, but at least we have 100% employment, universal health care, and the trains run on time!