> The flaw of your philosophy, in my view, is that you're just sweeping the tricky parts under the carpet by introducing concepts of "utility" and "right goal" and "society intends".
Sure, picking the "right" utility function is one of the hardest parts of utilitarianism. FWIW, I don't think maximizing agency is a different concept so much as a specific utility function that avoids some of the common pitfalls of strict utilitarianism (utility sinks: the person who gets enormous happiness from cannibalism). In other words you could imagine Agency as the "reasonable person" standard applied to the value of a choice. This still has flaws, but, IMO fewer than many other framings.
Some people might also find this to be similar to optimizing for the most "positive rights" across society, but I dislike that framing because the idea of positive vs. negative rights is silly, any right can be framed as positive or negative.
> Should a billionaire be able to spend $1m for the health of his/her child (maximize agency / freedom), or should the society put that money to "maximum utility" and spending it to help several (poorer) children (with illnesses that are less expensive to treat but still life threatening).
Note that giving a poor person money such that they can choose to treat their child's disease also increases agency! If you want to dive deep into this, I think that the marginal value of a dollar is probably logarithmic, or at least inverse quadratic or something, so a tax scheme modeled to tax top brackets in such a way that then improves the situation of those less off (pick your method: national healthcare, UBI, etc.) increases overall agency.
Sure, picking the "right" utility function is one of the hardest parts of utilitarianism. FWIW, I don't think maximizing agency is a different concept so much as a specific utility function that avoids some of the common pitfalls of strict utilitarianism (utility sinks: the person who gets enormous happiness from cannibalism). In other words you could imagine Agency as the "reasonable person" standard applied to the value of a choice. This still has flaws, but, IMO fewer than many other framings.
Some people might also find this to be similar to optimizing for the most "positive rights" across society, but I dislike that framing because the idea of positive vs. negative rights is silly, any right can be framed as positive or negative.
> Should a billionaire be able to spend $1m for the health of his/her child (maximize agency / freedom), or should the society put that money to "maximum utility" and spending it to help several (poorer) children (with illnesses that are less expensive to treat but still life threatening).
Note that giving a poor person money such that they can choose to treat their child's disease also increases agency! If you want to dive deep into this, I think that the marginal value of a dollar is probably logarithmic, or at least inverse quadratic or something, so a tax scheme modeled to tax top brackets in such a way that then improves the situation of those less off (pick your method: national healthcare, UBI, etc.) increases overall agency.