Your two principle goals—maximize total utility and minimize utility inequality—are in conflict, as is well-known. (If for no other reason, because incentives matter.) You can’t have both.
A more reasonable goal would be Pareto efficiency-limited utility inequality.
But it’s not literally impossible to achieve both goals. And I think there are practical ways to improve total utility and reduce utility inequality at the same time. For example, anything that helps make a sad being happy.
As I said, I don’t know how I’d make tradeoffs between total utility and utility inequality yet. If I did know, I would want society’s existing utility to be distributed in a Pareto efficient way.
Your two principle goals—maximize total utility and minimize utility inequality—are in conflict, as is well-known. (If for no other reason, because incentives matter.) You can’t have both.
A more reasonable goal would be Pareto efficiency-limited utility inequality.
But it’s not literally impossible to achieve both goals. And I think there are practical ways to improve total utility and reduce utility inequality at the same time. For example, anything that helps make a sad being happy.
As I said, I don’t know how I’d make tradeoffs between total utility and utility inequality yet. If I did know, I would want society’s existing utility to be distributed in a Pareto efficient way.
A separate problem is that there’s not really a principled way to compare utility between two individuals, so (in)equality is poorly defined.
I think having a theoretical definition helps me. But I agree that I can’t precisely measure utility in practice.