Utilitarianism as a philosophy on which to base business, government
             and society offers a great deal of ambiguity. It allows for almost as many
             interpretations as there are people to think about it. That being the
             case, it is, first and foremost, unworkable as a basis for conducting any
             sort of interaction, from commercial to governmental to social. Some people
             think utilitarianism means a sort of hedonistic good,' while others think
             it is an altruistic' good that is being sought. Some define happiness as
             present condition; others define it as the result of a lifetime. And that
             only begins to scratch the surface of the varying degrees of thinking about
             Utilitarianism, however, as most people very simplistically think
             about it, is putting pleasure before pain. Some take it a step beyond
             that, and consider it putting pleasure before pain for the greatest number
             of people. In some ways, of course, that is a very appealing sort of
             statement to members of a democratic society. In the U.S., for example,
             the belief in the rule of the majority is very prevalent. It is not,
             therefore, much of a stretch to propose that making pleasure, as opposed to
             pain, possible for the majority is a good thing.
             But basing action on such simplistic divisions into good and bad,
             pleasure-producing or pain-producing, greatest number or fewest number,
             leaves out a great deal of nuance. As they say, the devil is in the
             details. For example, let's say a business executive decided, on the basis
             of the most recent research, that it was good to cook all hamburgers in fat
             derived from the belly pouches of sleeping pandas. It would seem a good
             thing, in a utilitarian sense, to kill a few hundred pandas (oops, there
             are only a few hundred pandas, but this is imagination anyway) to get their
             fat to cook hamburgers for a huge population of hungry Americans. What
             could be wrong with that' I...