I have come to the conclusion that this is just a bandaid on a more fundamental problem. Whether we should choose total, average or even median utility isn’t something we could objectively decide. So I suggest that we go up one level, and maximize what most people want to maximize.
If you haven’t seen it, you may find this paper interesting: Geometric reasons for normalising variance to
aggregate preferences, by Owen Cotton-Barratt (as an example of another potentially elegant approach to aggregating preferences).