Is utilitarianism bringing our country down?

Utilitarianism ..and the greatest happiness principle

Utilitarianism is an ethical theory holding that the proper course of action is the one that maximizes the overall "happiness". It is thus a form of consequentialism, meaning that the moral worth of an action is determined only by its resulting outcome, and that one can only weigh the morality of an action after knowing all its consequences. The most influential contributors to this theory are considered to be Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill.

In effect ..Utilitarianism is the reason so many of our freedoms are infringed upon . The government doesn't exactly make laws based on that they won't reduce crime ..but it shuts the public up ....because after something horrible happens .the public demands SOMething be done . Utilitarianism answers to that . And in the mean time ...many rights are infringed upon , our conveniences lost . No conspiracy in the sense of nefarious planning ...just applying "ethical principals " to something that leads to disaster ..

We are in essence , our own worst enemy....always complaining about something "should be done" and when big brother does ..we bitch our freedoms are tramped on.... so what is it people ??

I would say that utilitarianism isn't even being applied here. Instead it is the clever use of associative fallacy that is screwing everything up.

For example, taking away freedom doesn't increase happiness, it shatters it and increases dissent.

What they are doing is finding one bad point and then falsely applying it to every other point that may exist, thus the association fallacy.

We are punishing everyone for the crimes of the few.
This creates a deteriorating situation where overall happiness is on the decline.

reply to post by paleorchid13


in the traditional sense, that is clearly not utility. the vast majority of policies pursued are not utilitarian.

reply to post by muzzleflash

I disagree. That's why false flag attacks work ......that's why fear works . That's why the gov get's away with so much ...because they appeal to people ..that they are "cracking down on the law " ....when all they are really doing is taking people liberties away and compromising privacy ...such as making people sign forms to purchase certain items ...like drain cleaner as another OP put it,

reply to post by duality90


In what sense ? Please explain

reply to post by muzzleflash

I disagree ...some guy puts a bomb in his underoos and we say it's okay to scan us naked ....some guy throws acid and now we show ID to check out drain cleaner ..
We give up personal information in hopes of some kind of security ...but that's foolish

reply to post by muzzleflash

I really have to give that a chuckle . People are MORE than willing to give up liberties for sake of security.

Originally posted by paleorchid13
reply to post by muzzleflash

 

I disagree ...some guy puts a bomb in his underoos and we say it's okay to scan us naked ....some guy throws acid and now we show ID to check out drain cleaner ..
We give up personal information in hopes of some kind of security ...but that's foolish

You actually just proved my point about the associative fallacy.

See, this one guy wears underwear bombs. Therefore everyone does.
It's a fallacy and it's misleading everyone into decreasing their happiness by giving up their freedom.

This is one place where you can also have Corrupt Utilitarianism.

This is the act of making people believe that a majority of other people are for something by using slanted polls or out right lying

If they came out with polls that claimed 60% 0f Americans wanted a complete ban on automatic weapons and for that reason the were now going to take everyone's semi auto weapons claiming that is what the poll said. This would be Corrupt Utilitarianism.

Case in point
jonathanturley.org...
Automatic weapons have been banned since June 26, 1934 to all but a few that get special permits and there has been been so little violence with legal machine gun that it is almost imposable to find a case where a legal machine gun owner has killed anyone with a permitted machine gun,

The environmental movement is a leader in Corrupt Utilitarianism.
They do a lot of polls asking one thing and them claim they said another.

Like asking if Americans believe in climate change and then claiming people wanted laws to stop man made climate change.