[chezlaw]

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What definition of happiness are you going to use when you try to maximize it?

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"Happiness" means not just pleasure, but joy, peace, contentment, and well-being. Suffering is the opposite of that.

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just showing that utilitarianism assumes centralized decision making (someone picks the "best" utility-distribution scheme) is enough to discredit it.

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I think utilitarianism is a good thought for personal morality. And, if everyone used it, I think the world would be a much better place. The biggest problem is trying to weigh everyone's "happiness" level. So, really, it's just a way to remind you to be considerate & compassionate of all the people your actions affect.

I don't think a centralized government would be able to control this very well in a large society -- much like they couldn't control the economy very well either. In a small society, such as the island, it may be possible, though. There would be no need for a republic, a pure democracy could work just fine. So, the decision making would be distributed -- to all the inhabitants of the island.

Again, it would only maximize happiness, if others wanted everyone to be happy. This is key -- and unfortunately, I'm quite jaded by my experiences, but try to maintain my idealism -- I'm not sure why.

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I've been letting this go for a bit, but I think your ideas of maximising personal happiness (which is slighly misleading but we agree on) is inconsistent with the idea of wanting to maximise everyone's happiness.

They could be consistent if it would maximise your happiness if everyone else was as happy as possible but there doesn't seem any reason to believe that's true. In fact, the happiness of a few people is so important to your happiness that the happiness of the rest quickly becomes of small (not necessarily zero) importance.

I also claim (counter-intuitively) that the best way for everybody to be happy is to not try to maximise everyone's happiness when making decisions.

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I actually think it's a huge prisoner's dilemma. If people try to do what will maximize their personal happiness, then everyone will be less happy than if they would have cooperated (by being considerate & compassionate). That being said, most of the time, your immediate happiness is more realizable than your affect on others, and the closer someone is to your family/friend circle, the more their happiness affects yours. But, often, people don't think about how some minor thing they do, that may not really bring them much happiness if any, will make other people vastly less happy. Should you even care that they are now less happy? Yes, cooperation & reciprocity increase happiness.

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It would be nice if you're right, then we could say to anyone who makes others suffer that they will be paid back in suffering to themselves (or at least probably paid back). It seems highly implausible and the sort of thing that's only tempting to believe because it would be nice if it were true.

chez