Medians (was Re: [EM] Absolute Utilities)

[Martin Harper]

Forest Simmons wrote:


> I will argue in another posting that in general maximizing mean utility is
> less democratic than maximizing median utility, which in turn is less
> democratic than maximizing (number of voters receiving) acceptable utility
> (which corresponds to Approval). 

I'm going to call you on that one...

On the example given of GNP in countries, the fallacy is that utility is 
not proportional to money. If I have no money, then £100 pounds means a 
lot more to me than it would do to a millionaire. From experimentation 
people reckon that utility is related to the logarithm of the amount of 
money (with offsets and such), though there are more complicated curves 
that have been suggested. With this correction, I would be happy to say 
that the country with the highest mean utility was the best, and 
certainly better than one with merely a highest median GNP.