If claims of need are strictly discontinuous with any amount of
above-threshold desire satisfaction, we may be led to endorse any
amount of expenditure in cases where needs can only be met by
extremely expensive treatment. The value of a child’s life is
inestimable, we are often told, and mercifully a popular newspaper
campaign will induce some generous millionaire to fund the neces-
sary course of treatment. But who would endorse the systematic
provision of all necessary resources to achieve some low prob-
ability of meeting dire medical need?
The utilitarian can go two ways on this. He can bite the bullet
and insist that overall gains do require whatever is necessary to
provide goods that are genuinely needed and on this basis call for a
radical redistribution of resources. Or he can revise his view that
the claims of need are discontinuous with non-needy claims. But
this threatens his belief that he has principles of justice that
reflect our prereflective intuitions about the strength of claims of
need. The utilitarian faces a genuine problem here – but perhaps
he can console himself that it is a problem that no theorist of
justice can easily avoid.
Desert
We have established that the utilitarian has something plausible, if
not definitive, to say about distributions of resources that favour
equality and the meeting of needs. Another important principle,
which many prereflectively endorse, is that goods should be allo-
cated to those who deserve them, in particular to those who have
worked hard in the production of goods and services. Can the utili-
tarian accommodate any principle of desert?
The traditional utilitarian strategy has been to reduce claims of
desert to the provision of incentives. First, there is the piece-work
argument: if I cut down twice as many trees as you, working
harder, I deserve more financial reward than you do. You could
have worked as hard as I, but you took a longer lunch break and
sunbathed for a couple of hours in the afternoon. Behind this
claim, it is suggested, is the thought that greater productiveness
requires the incentive of greater reward. Second, it is often
claimed that some skills need a good deal of effort to acquire –
UTILITARIANISM