I think utilitarianism has always been collectivist in its essence, it simply that that aspect was not emphasized or not discovered yet in Mill's time. Utilitarianism absolutely justifies taxing Elon Musk's entire wealth and spending it on malaria nets in Malawi.
But in Mill's time, collectivist ideas were coming from conservatives, and liberals were individualists, because the basic liberal assumption was that only the government has any real power, make the government small and power or oppression does not happen.
After that time other kinds of power were quickly discovered, and then people thought if you use the government against this or that power, there will be less oppression and more freedom.
Is there a good way to specify the boundaries of interest? There exist busybodies who disapprove of nearly anything, and anything that escapes their interests might be considered a benefit by yet others, making it of interest to them. I am quibbling, but whether this means that we should stipulate an appropriate definition of interest or use a different concept or word, or come up with a better concept, I am not sure.
In other words, interests are not necessarily physical, nor even objective. I think the norms we use to answer such questions has to rest on justice rather than interest.
This all tempts me to complain about the harm principle, since for it to work, harm must be considered a normative and subjective thing. If harm is objective, sparring in a martial arts gym or boxing should be prohibited, because physical harm is nearly inevitable. The critical factor is that it is consensual harm, a risk taken willingly. And this leads to even more questions, even further from the post topic.
I think utilitarianism has always been collectivist in its essence, it simply that that aspect was not emphasized or not discovered yet in Mill's time. Utilitarianism absolutely justifies taxing Elon Musk's entire wealth and spending it on malaria nets in Malawi.
But in Mill's time, collectivist ideas were coming from conservatives, and liberals were individualists, because the basic liberal assumption was that only the government has any real power, make the government small and power or oppression does not happen.
After that time other kinds of power were quickly discovered, and then people thought if you use the government against this or that power, there will be less oppression and more freedom.
Is there a good way to specify the boundaries of interest? There exist busybodies who disapprove of nearly anything, and anything that escapes their interests might be considered a benefit by yet others, making it of interest to them. I am quibbling, but whether this means that we should stipulate an appropriate definition of interest or use a different concept or word, or come up with a better concept, I am not sure.
In other words, interests are not necessarily physical, nor even objective. I think the norms we use to answer such questions has to rest on justice rather than interest.
This all tempts me to complain about the harm principle, since for it to work, harm must be considered a normative and subjective thing. If harm is objective, sparring in a martial arts gym or boxing should be prohibited, because physical harm is nearly inevitable. The critical factor is that it is consensual harm, a risk taken willingly. And this leads to even more questions, even further from the post topic.