There is no way to raise the well-being of society, mainly because “society” is an abstract concept made up of many individuals with different preferences.
Well,-being, individuals, and utility are also abstractions.
(Note that it’s standard here to treat a flesh and blood human beings as a bunch of sub agents. The assumption that a de facto agent has a coherent UF is convenient for decision theory, but that doesn’t make it a fact)..
When someone says that they will improve the well-being of society, this person is usually:
⦾ Carrying out a simplification or homogenization of the multiple preferences of the individuals that make up that society;
⦾ Modeling your own personal preferences as if these were the preferences of society as a whole.
Or...responding to demands. Democracy is a system that sends demands upwards to people who can do something about them.
The problem is that a holistic abstraction like “the society” is less effective in describing a picture closer to reality than the ideal type of methodological individualism (“the individual”). Reducing it to this fundamental fragment is much better at describing the processes that actually occur in so-called social phenomena.
And yes, Democracy is the system that best captures this notion that it is not possible to achieve a total improvement of the society.
But if individuals are not the basic fragments (the units to which we can most reduce our analysis), then what?
In my view, we would start to enter into psychobiological investigations of how, for example, genes make choices. However, if we were to reduce it to that level, as David Friedman rightly observed, the conclusions would be the same...
I—But would an analysis as sub-agents be better than an analysis as if they were the true agents? And why would they be subagents? Who would be the main causal agent?
II—Conclusions drawn from an analysis of utility theory through methodological individualism.
Well,-being, individuals, and utility are also abstractions.
(Note that it’s standard here to treat a flesh and blood human beings as a bunch of sub agents. The assumption that a de facto agent has a coherent UF is convenient for decision theory, but that doesn’t make it a fact)..
Or...responding to demands. Democracy is a system that sends demands upwards to people who can do something about them.
What isn’t an abstraction?
The problem is that a holistic abstraction like “the society” is less effective in describing a picture closer to reality than the ideal type of methodological individualism (“the individual”). Reducing it to this fundamental fragment is much better at describing the processes that actually occur in so-called social phenomena.
And yes, Democracy is the system that best captures this notion that it is not possible to achieve a total improvement of the society.
People aren’t the fundamental fragment. Quarks, or something are.
But if individuals are not the basic fragments (the units to which we can most reduce our analysis), then what?
In my view, we would start to enter into psychobiological investigations of how, for example, genes make choices. However, if we were to reduce it to that level, as David Friedman rightly observed, the conclusions would be the same...
Subagents? As I said
The conclusion that societies don’t exist, or the conclusion that people don’t exist? Or both?
I—But would an analysis as sub-agents be better than an analysis as if they were the true agents? And why would they be subagents? Who would be the main causal agent?
II—Conclusions drawn from an analysis of utility theory through methodological individualism.
II so if you assume individualism, you conclude individualism?
But I was taking “that level” in “if we were to reduce it to that level” to mean the subagent level.