A Society That Allows Slavery

Utilitarianism is a moral theory that argues that the right thing to do will always be the action that creates “the most good for the most amount of people.” But while this does seem like a solid moral basis, we find that it often suggests we commit actions that we might find quite reprehensible, such as slavery.

There are four general parts to this moral theory if we break it down.

1. Consequentialism: the action’s morality is decided by its consequences
2. Hedonism: happiness or an absence of sadness is the only intrinsically good thing
3. Strict Impartiality: no one’s happiness should be counted as more than anyone else’s
4. Aggregation: everyone’s happiness will be summed up and we only consider the net total

Now, at first glance, these seem like pretty solid grounds for a moral theory to stand on. But when we apply these pillars to certain cases, we see that it gives out some morally dubious results.

Let’s start with a smaller case and work our way up to the slavery example.

Consider the following scenario:

You are on your way to a job interview. This interview is guaranteed to land you a position that will make you a large amount of money. With this job, you could pay off any debt, buy a home for your family, and live comfortably for the majority of your life.

On the walk there, you notice a child screaming for help. This child is in the lake nearby and is clearly struggling to swim and keeps slipping beneath the surface. There is no one around the lake besides you, and no one has noticed you here. You are now faced with this choice.

Either you can dive into the water and save this child, ruining your clothes and guaranteeing that you will never get this job position. Or, you could ignore the child and go to the interview, leaving them to drown while you secure your job.

What do you do?

I think it’s a fairly straightforward situation, and almost everyone would save the child and miss that interview. And utilitarianism agrees with us on this.

Since saving the child will lead to the highest overall happiness — seeing as the child will be alive and the parents, siblings, and friends will not have to mourn — with you suffering relatively little, it is clearly the right thing to do.

So far, so good. But let’s take it a step up and see where this theory goes wrong.

To see how utilitarianism might allow or even condone slavery, consider the following case:

There are a large number of people in this town, and what makes them happier than anything else is that they make a large amount of money but without any expenses. If there are any expenses, their overall happiness goes down. And suppose that this earning can be achieved by just one person with extraordinary skills.

*for a full proper thought experiment, read The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas

It would be right then, according to the utilitarian theory, to enslave that one person to improve the happiness of all the people in the town, seeing as this does provide the highest net utility.

And while someone may point out that this could never be the case in the real world — that any happiness brought to the owner would be inconsequential when compared to the slave’s lack of pleasure, this objection still stands. The objection points out that if slavery has the best consequences, then slavery is still the right way to go.

But we know that slavery is wrong, even if it creates the most happiness, so the utilitarian argument cannot be the way to go! Slavery violates individual rights that an individual has, so how could it possibly be the right thing to do?

An objection to the slavery case

A response someone may have to this argument is that the best consequence can always be attained through actions that will respect human rights, such as the right to liberty.

John Stuart Mill, one of the original proponents of the utilitarian theory, argues that the right action with the most utility will always respect each individual’s right to liberty. He argues in his work, On Liberty, that the only time coercive power can be used is when protecting someone from harming others — known as Mill’s Harm Principle.

This argument essentially suggests that the utilitarian should be in favour of protecting moral rights. However, I would argue that moral rights, those that we have simply because we are human beings, are simply incompatible with utilitarianism.

The utilitarian holds that actions and laws should be evaluated in terms of their net utility, and only their net utility. Today’s laws, though, are based far more on moral rights than on utility, and we see that it isn’t always the case that these moral rights line up with utility.

Consider seatbelt laws for example. Libertarians, those who believe that the right to liberty should decide morality, argue against these laws, claiming that it violates the right to liberty. However, imposing these laws also led to the best possible consequences, seeing as they reduce the risk of death by nearly half and saved over 250,000 lives since 1975.

Since this case shows that utility doesn’t always line up with moral rights, the utilitarian would have to reject the consideration of moral rights and thus allow slavery as the ‘right’ action in cases where it leads to the best possible outcome.

A Utilitarian Society

Now that we’ve considered some of the pitfalls and issues with utilitarianism, let’s consider what a society whose laws were based entirely on this principle would look like.

One major issue would be what we’ve already discussed — that slavery would be entirely lawful and even encouraged in some situations. As a broader scope, the violation of personal rights would be permitted, under the conditions that it produces better overall consequences.

Consider a situation where the CIA captures some terrorists that have planted a bomb that could kill thousands of people. This society would permit them to torture this person or their family to find the location of the bomb under any circumstance. Even at a smaller scale, we would have a number of injustices.

We see then that, if we want to take into consideration moral rights and justice, a utilitarian society is not the way to go.

This story was previously published on Medium.