Their morals and ours

There is a problem with workshyness -  there’s not enough of it.
I’m serious. If more people - not all, just more - wanted not to work, aggregate well-being would improve. The unemployed would be happier. And those who wanted to work would face less competition for jobs and hence have more chance of getting their wish. Yes, employers would lose as less there’d be less competition bidding down wages, but as the minimum wage puts a floor upon how far this can happen, this loss might be small.
On balance, utilitarians should at least welcome the fact that some people don’t want to work, and perhaps wish that more didn’t - at least, in conditions where the dominant cause of unemployment is a lack of demand for labour.
This, of course, is not the conventional opinion. Which only goes to show that there is a big difference between popular morality and the utilitarianism which is the dominant morality of economists and technocrats.
It’s not only in attitudes to workshyness that we see this conflict. German attitudes to the euro zone’s fiscal crisis owe more to Calvinism than to utilitarianism. Ulitmatum game experiments show that (in the west at least! (pdf)) people reject some mutually-enriching transactions, which means that considerations of fairness trump utilitarianism. Restrictions upon markets in drugs, prostitution and body organs, as well as against music piracy,  are probably also founded in the view that some things that promote welfare are morally wrong - which is the quintessence of anti-utilitarianism. And a famous paper (pdf) by Daniel Kahneman and colleagues showed that the public are hostile to wage cuts or price rises that exploit a firms’ market power. Insofar as such attitudes prevent price rises in booms or wage cuts in recession, they might, arguably, cause markets to fail to clear. Again, perceptions of fairness undermines utilitarianism.
What we have in all these cases is a clash of moral views.
Unlike most people, I’m not going to take sides here. As I argued in my book (which I learned today earned me the princely sum of  £18.97 in the last six months), technocratic utilitarianism is gravely flawed. But popular morality is often mere emotivism and ego projection.
I far that when morality and economics collide, we just see the truth of Alasdair MacIntyre’s claim:

We possess indeed simulacra of morality, we continue to use many of the key expressions. But we have - very largely in not entirely - lost our comprehension, both theoretical and practical, of morality. (After Virtue, p2)

Comments

[Luis Enrique]

I've read your criticisms of 'technocratic utilitarianism' but it's still not clear to me what the better alternatives are. I think I'd still rather have decisions taken with the (ill defined and problematic) greater good as guiding principle than any other.

a small point: welfare wise, there's quite a difference between people not wanting to work, but first working to get themselves in a position where they can afford not to, and people not wanting to work who then require being housed and fed by the labour of others. It's not obvious to me where the utilitarian calculation comes out in the latter case.

[Chris E]

"German attitudes to the euro zone’s fiscal crisis owe more to Calvinism than to utilitarianism."

I'm not sure this is true - contrast and compare German and Scottish attitudes.

[Tom Addison]

I bought your book a month or two ago, so without me, who knows, it may have been negative.

[Michael Fowke]

And if people don't want to work, forcing them on employers won't do anybody any good.

[ortega]

The tension moral vs law seems to be at the very core of the liberal system, and it cannot be solved, because in that tension lies the very essence of it.

[Keith]

Surely Louis Enrique is wrong in his comment. If you are wealthy you are living on the Labour of others if you are not selling your Labour power, as you are consuming social output like the elderly living on a pension. All consumption of real goods comes from conteporaneous production employing someons Labour power today or relatively soon in the past.

The very rich often inherit wealth like the PM and deputy PM so live on others Labour at a greater distance!

Great wealth is often derived from imoral activity such as Imperialism or child Labour or employing workers in asbestos factories bringing about their death from cancer. Wealth confers no moral virtue in itself. Often it is a sign of mere greed and abuse of power or opportunities to exploit other people.

Chris is wrong about Utilitarianism also. Liberty is not a end of morals for Bentham as an example. Banning drugs can be the state acting in the properly understood interests of the potential drug user. You can make a Utilitarian case for banning anything if you want to. The Utility of Bentham can be interpreted as a form of Totalitarianism. With Mr. B sitting in his see all building bulllying the inmates, to want what he thinks is good for them in his opinion.

J S Mill tries to convince us that Liberty and Utility are not inconsistent ideas, but I have never been convinced by his argument On Liberty.

[Niklas Smith]

"I’m serious. If more people - not all, just more - wanted not to work, aggregate well-being would improve. The unemployed would be happier. And those who wanted to work would face less competition for jobs and hence have more chance of getting their wish."

Well, surely that depends on whether the unemployed can get a decent standard of living without working. If not, then all you'll get is a large number of people forced to work to get money for rent, food and clothes and jolly unhappy about it.

On the subject of your book, I think I might add to your royalties by finally getting a copy :)