Happiness is....

As I was running today, my mind wandered to questions of basic distribution and enjoyment of goods.

My question is this: should we measure distribution in terms of the levels of happiness certain groupings of goods give, or should we just measure the distribution of "primary goods"? Of course we have to have some basic unit that we can compare across different distributions, otherwise we would be comparing apples to oranges, but I'm not sure which is superior.

Rawls argues that it should be primary goods, whereas Utilitarians think it should be the level of happiness, and I automatically want to think that Utilitarians are wrong. Luckily, in this case they seem to be, if only because measuring levels of happiness necessitates basing the distribution of society on the subjective happiness that people receive.

But what if a person is impossible to please? This would mean that, if we're trying to make utility equal for every person (not something a Utilitarian would want to do) this person will have to get a larger share of goods than a person who is very easy to please. Conversly, if we are trying to maximize society's total utility, the impossible to please person will receive less goods than the other.

Both situations seem unfairr, although for different reasons. Rawls tries to get around this by dealing only with primary goods, but it's unclear that this method is better. First, there are goodds which are excluded from being primary goods - but why shouldn't these be included in an examination of a society's distribution? Also, what if a person simply needs more primary goods than another to survive? A sickly person will need more medical attention than someone who is healthy, but it isn't entirely clear that they would get that under Rawl's system.

And if you made it to the end of this post, you can now see that I've been rambling without any real point. Except to say this:

We should play hide-and-seek (in the dark) on Monday night, since a lot of people don't have work on Tuesday (and yes, I'll be in Bakersfield!).