Medians (was Re: [EM] Absolute Utilities)

[Forest Simmons]

On Tue  , 1 May 2001, Martin Harper wrote:

> 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.
> 
> 

If you want to use utility instead of money, by all means do so ... across
the board. In that case highest mean utility is less democratic than
highest median utility, which in turn, is less democratic than highest
percentage of the population with enough utility to at least subsist.

The same argument holds as before: in the calculation of mean utility one
person's excess may cancel the deficiency of several people, while there
is no corresponding transfer of actual utility from the utility rich to
the utility poor. [The rich are as adept as plugging the utility leaks as
they are in stopping up the trickle down of money.]

In the calculation of median utility each person above the median cancels
exactly one person below the median, whether or not any actual
sharing of utility takes place between the two corresponding parties.

On the other hand, in the calculation of the living utility number, no
person's excess is assumed to compensate for another's deficiency.

So maximizing the living utility number (the percentage of the population
with enough utility to live decently) is a democratic defense against
the concentration of wealth, power, and other utilities in the corporate
controlled world. 

If we want any kind of democracy in the face of this global corporate
reality we cannot expect the rich and powerful to level the utility to
everyone's satisfaction by spreading the excess around to the unfortunate.
No matter how much utility a corporation (or other legal person) might
have, he usually thinks it prudent to hang on to most of it or re-invest
it rather than spread it around too much. 

Forest