A utilitarian wants to make value-free decisions, based solely on numerical costs and benefits.  Yet values seep up from the floorboards to inform every part of the cost/benefit equation.  I recall a conversation with my wife early in our marriage. The issue was whether we should hire domestic help to do household chores or do it ourselves.  On one side of the ledger, if you look at the numbers, using help makes efficient use of our time, since our time is a valuable commodity in the marketplace.  Both my wife and I are professionals.  In our economic lives, our time has a numerical equivalent, an hourly rate, which is a lot higher than the hourly rate of the domestic help.  On the other side of the ledger, does my family time really have an hourly rate?  The family is not a marketplace, and our economic selves stop at the front door.  Doing chores is an essential part of our responsibility to family, of showing love and respect for each other.  

You see, just by asking a utilitarian question, by talking about hourly rates, we’ve already decided to hire domestic help.  Talking in numbers and doing a cost/benefit equation means we’re relating to the world as I-and-It, and the assumptions of the It stance have already determined the conclusion.  Our civilization is pickled in numbers, and our numbers are pickled in a prior value choice: I-and-It. 

In sum, a utilitarian would convert all parts of a decision to numbers, beyond subjective values, then run a cost/benefit analysis on the numbers to arrive at a rational, optimal decision.  It seems objective… except that his equation is driven by values and his numbers are crap.  When my son was choosing a college, I prepared a grid showing the costs and benefits of various factors we considered important.  We used numbers to rank the colleges per the factors.  We was me.  Me: I chose the factors and put the numbers on them.  I tried to be as objective as I could, more or less, because I love my son and respect him.  Still, it was me who cooked the meal, and I didn’t know what the hell I was doing.  A teenager choosing a college is a complex decision, grounded in the great unknowns of the teenager himself and the colleges as they exist beyond their brochures.  My utility calculation was value-driven and ignorant.

My preparation of the college grid was an exercise in power, albeit a proper one given my role as father.  All too often, utility devolves into power hiding behind phony objectivity and phony expertise. Some years ago, I served on a local governmental commission.  Before each meeting, City staff prepared for us commissioners a report on the issues.  The reports were filled with numbers and graphs.  All the cost/benefit analysis wrapped seamlessly into the recommendations given by City staff, that is, the numbers always seemed consistent with the political preferences of City staff, as if by magic.  Not long after, I noticed that City staff pays expert consultants to prepare these materials.  The City uses the consultants to give expert and neutral opinions.  Yet why is it that the consultants always seemed to agree with the preferences of City staff?  Because City staff only hires experts who give the preferred conclusion.  You get what you pay for, in this case, expert justification of the moral preferences of City staff, expressed in numbers, which then formed a rational basis for the City’s exercise of power in the community.  But who’s the pot calling the kettle black?  I did it to my son.  Dads and City staff have to make recommendations, sons and City commissioners have to make choices, and it’s all pickled in values and ignorance.

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In the I-and-It world of Caesar, we reduce everything to use-value… and it’s OK.  Everything and everybody is a tool, and to this extent the I-and-It perspective is itself a powerful tool that helps us manipulate the world to our advantage.  We spend most of daily life in the I-and-It stance, getting things done by running little cost/benefit calculations and using other people in little ways, and hopefully we do it in a courteous and respectful manner (which is my next essay). 

All this is necessary in a world of scarcity and budgets.  We need Caesar to make the trains run on time, on budget, and he better use utility calculations to make it happen.  So we render to Caesar what is Caesar’s.