I've always wondered this. So many faceless trolley problems. How would utilitarianism apply to "good things" happening to "good vs bad people?" Or "bad things" happening to "good vs bad people?"

Is it all just the same...

The implications of the drowning child problem are radical, yet logically unavoidable under a utilitarian framework.

If you’re willing to ruin an expensive pair of shoes to save a child drowning in front of you, then morally, there’s no meaningful difference between that act and donating that same amount of money to prevent a child’s death somewhere else in the world. Geographic distance doesn’t change the moral weight of a life, nor does emotional proximity alter the ethical calculus.

This line of reasoning applies far beyond one-off acts of charity. It challenges the morality of nearly every discretionary decision we make. For example: •Instead of buying a drink while out with friends, you could donate that same money to a vetted charity and potentially help save a life. •Instead of dining at a restaurant, you could forgo the extra comfort for one evening, knowing that even a fraction of that money could go toward essential medicine, food, or water for someone in crisis.

Even if you can’t be 100% certain that a charity uses every dollar efficiently, the principle still holds: if even 50% of your donation reaches those in need, that partial impact still outweighs the moral value of indulging in a luxury for yourself.

Of course, one might argue that it’s better to invest time into building your own charity, or ensuring maximum efficiency through direct action. But that misses the larger point: the baseline moral obligation already exists. The fact that a better method might exist doesn’t excuse doing nothing in the meantime.

When people reject this logic, the counterarguments often boil down to emotional bias and self-interest: •“But it’s my money.” •“I deserve to enjoy life.” •“It’s too exhausting to think this way all the time.”

And yet, these are not moral counterarguments—they’re psychological defenses. Once you strip them away, the core utilitarian truth remains:

If you can prevent severe harm or death with minimal cost to yourself, and you choose not to, you’re allowing preventable suffering to continue for the sake of your own comfort.

The conclusion is unsettling. It forces us to acknowledge that, unless we’re giving away everything we don’t need to survive and maintain basic psychological function, we’re living less ethically than we could.(put in a very generous way). More like, Everytime we go out for a drink, really all we are is just a bunch of piece of shits.

But unsettling doesn’t mean wrong. It just means honest

The paradox of the collective effect without an agent

Imagine an election where the outcome affects millions of lives. But your individual vote has virtually no impact. So, under an act-utilitarian criterion, you probably shouldn't vote, your time could be better spent directly helping someone or working for a cause. However, if no one votes, democracy collapses.

Here is the dilemma:

The collective outcome is of immense importance.

No individual has enough agency to alter it alone.

Therefore, there is no direct individual moral obligation involved, and yet the collective phenomenon has real moral consequences.

This is an example of a morally relevant effect without a single responsible moral agent. A type of “objective moral ambiguity” that is not a logical error, but a reflection of the structure of agency.

The breakdown of the act-rule dichotomy

Normally, this tension leads to the traditional distinction between act utilitarianism (what is best to do now) and rule utilitarianism (following rules that, if generally adopted, maximize utility).

But there's a problem with that, because the distinction becomes artificial if we examine who the agents in question are.

--> An individual has no control over collective rules. He can only act within the limits of his own agency.

--> An authority (a legislator, judge, institutional leader) does have the power to structure norms and shape aggregate behaviors.

And this is where the important point comes in -->

Rule Utilitarianism is Act Utilitarianism with Systemic Power

There are not two utilitarianisms. There is only act utilitarianism applied in two different contexts of agency.

The ordinary individual acts with minimal impact, and therefore should evaluate their own acts locally.

The authority acts with structural impact, and therefore should calculate the aggregate effects of its decisions.

Thus, what we call "rule utilitarianism" is just act utilitarianism from the position of someone with power over the masses.

Objective but contextual agency

This creates a scenario where we recognize the possibility of two agents, two opposing duties, yet both correct within their agency contexts.

(Just an example) A citizen has no obligation to vote, as their vote has negligible impact.

A State must encourage or mandate voting, as its influence changes collective behavior.

Both are morally justified within their real limits of agency.

This applies to countless cases in the Individual-Authority action dynamic, like lying in court, going against authority, or even throwing trash in the street.

True utilitarianism requires a contextual view of agency. This breaks from the attempt to unify ethical prescriptions in a timeless and universal way, and recognizes that the agent’s real causal leverage defines what is morally expected of them.

Conclusion

Utilitarianism does not fail to deal with individual actions in collective contexts.

What fails is the attempt to apply the same metric to agents with completely different causal powers.

There is no contradiction between the citizen not voting and the State requiring voting, both are, even if counterintuitively, right.

In the end, there are not two utilitarianisms. There is one ethical framework, applied contextually according to each actor’s scale of agency.