The override button isn't a bad idea, though.
That is to say, just because you can show that a policy produces gains on some statistical matrix does not mean that it is morally correct to coerce people into your scheme, particularly people that aren't doing anything wrong.
Consider if I could show that eliminating redheads from society lowered traffic fatalities, saving 10k lives per year [1]. Would you argue it proper to kill off all the redheads [2]? Or even to use the minimum force 'necessary,' and require all redheads to keep their hair dyed brown? I hope not.
Just be cognizant of whether the outlines of your argument can lead to nonsense.
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[1] Perhaps lots of men were rubbernecking behind the wheel to get a good look at those redheads, but the researchers couldn't definitively determine the causal pathway.
[2] Only if the net present value of the expected future gain in lives was greater than the number of redheads that needed to die, of course.
- general knowledge that "hey, there's a law against indecent exposure; waving penis at passing drivers is indecent exposure"
- general knowledge that penis-flashers who get caught will suffer unpleasant consequences
...it's certainly not "cut off all the penii preemptively", and not even "surgically install unremovable loincloths"; in other words if red hair was really that unbelievably distracting the worst-case scenario minimal force for redheads would be that they cover up while in certain parts of the public.
So aside from the strawman choice of examples, you're also depending on utilitarianism to argue against it, which is pretty lame:
- don't be a utilitarian! it leads to bad outcomes!
- paying generously above market rates? argue it is a morale-booster that leads to happier employees -> higher productivity -> higher profits -> higher shareholder value
- paying perilously below-market rates? argue the obvious cost-cutting line -> fatter margins -> higher profits -> higher shareholder value
...and the same with any other appeal to some vague metric of utility.
My serious point is that if you are arguing against "utilitarianism" (at that hoary level of abstraction) by saying:
- here's an example where 'utilitarianism' yields bad outcomes
...you're self-defeating, b/c your sole argument contra 'utilitarianism' hinges on a utilitarian-inspired argument (that the fact that one course of action yields better actions than another => taking the better course).
All you've accomplished is shown that you, too, seem to be a utilitarian, and all you're doing is pointing out a need to be careful in how you choose your utility metric. This doesn't make a convincing case against utilitarianism-the-abstraction and opens your specific 'corner case' to examination, which likely will not fare well if you pick a silly 'corner case' to try.
Here's a serious example:
As it so happens, statistical research demonstrates that increased gun ownership generally reduces incidences of home invasion and violent crime. But if you believe fundamentally in the right of peaceful individuals to defend themselves, their families, and to own firearms, then this is just a happy coincidence. The right of peaceful people to generally do as they please is more important than the impact on some vague notion of social utility.
If you're going to try and have an honest debate you ought to pick an example that's not so laughable on its face; it's too hard for me to "forget" the actual sizes of the groups in question even when I try to assume they're comparable.
I pretty much give up on you; the sequence here is:
- some dude points out "if you could show that forcibly staying within the speedlimit => many more lives saved due to fewer accidents than are lost due to inability to speed to the hospital, it might be justified to hard-code the speed limit"
- rather than debate on the actual merits of the specific point in question, you pop over to trying to argue that on general principles the road to hell is paved with utilitarianism
- to make your case you invent a contrived example that's so far off as to be close to intellectual dishonesty
- you give up on your example and revert to just saying what it was supposed to accomplish -- showing that acting on utilitarian-calculus 'lives vs. lives' has revolting implications for the individuals on the wrong side of a decision -- while missing the point: utilitarianism is a tool for choosing between shitty alternatives, and that going the other way (picking the other alternative) has revolting implications for the individuals on the wrong side, too...which is why this is hard
Generally the best you can do is pray you're never finding yourself in a position where any of your decisions will inevitably have shitty consequences for other people; part of the general cussedness of life is that you can really only escape such positions -- or at least your awareness of being within one -- by shirking responsibility, adopting willful blindness, limiting the scope of your options, or becoming a jerk.