One of Nozick’s arguments against utilitarianism was the “utility monster”: a person who always gets enormous happiness from every extra dollar, more happiness than anyone else in society. If such a person existed, the utilitarian solution would be to give all the wealth in society to Nozick’s utility monster; any other income distribution would needlessly waste resources. This possibility was appalling to Nozick. Nozick’s argument is intentionally extreme, but we can use it as a metaphor to think about the ethics of real-world income redistribution.
a. Do you know any utility monsters in your own life: people who get absurdly large amounts of happiness from buying things, owning things, going places? Perhaps a family member or someone from high school?
b. Do you know any utility misers? That would be people who don’t get much pleasure from anything they do or anything they own, even though they probably have enough money to buy what they want.
c. In your view, would it be ethical for the government to distribute income from real- world utility misers to real-world utility monsters? Why or why not?