Prospect utilitarianism: A better alternative to sufficientarianism

The Prospects for ‘Prospect Utilitarianism’

“…Hun Chung (2017) has recently developed an interesting view of distributive justice, 'prospect utilitarianism' (PU). In Chung's view, PU can accommodate the central intuitive insights of sufficientarianism without its weaknesses.…”

“…In other words: People respond differently to gains and losses, relative to some reference point. It is better to get a given sum of money when close to the threshold than when far away, moving both up and down from the reference point. The change in utility from a change of resource of size n is greater when below the reference point than when above. Chung's PU is a utilitarian view which adopts the observations of prospect theory. Each individual has an ‘individual critical sufficiency threshold’, which differs from others’ thresholds, namely ‘the amount of material resources he/she needs to adequately function as a normal human being’ (Chung 2017: 1921). Their personal utility function obeys prospect theory with respect to that threshold: losses are more negative than equivalent gains are positive; and additional resources are worth more the closer the individual is to the threshold in either direction.…”

The indispensability of sufficientarianism

“…Borrowing a concept from poverty research, we can thus say that sufficientarians argue that we have special obligations in the face of shortfalls, defined as failures to reach the threshold level (cf. Alkire et al, 2015;Foster, Greer, & Thorbecke, 2010;Herlitz & Horan, 2016, 2017. Staying at a highly general level, we can define sufficientarianism in the following way.…”

“…This is of course also recognized in the debates on sufficientarianism, and a variety of positions have been defended (cf. Benbaji 2005;Chung, 2017;Crisp, 2003;Dorsey, 2012;Herlitz & Horan 2017;Huseby, 2010;Shields, 2012).…”

“…There is, however, one point that appears deeply problematic for all sufficientarian theories. Regardless of what grounds one invokes, and regardless of how one believes that priority weights should be established in case of scarcity, one needs to present an actual threshold level that implies discontinuities in how benefits are valued (Chung, 2017;Shields, 2012). This is not easy to do, and there seems to be not an insignificant amount of arbitrariness involved when it is presented.…”