Acts and Rules

Abstract

Act utilitarianism is short-term, reactive and piecemeal. It is a pragmatic response to a here-and-now challenge. Act utilitarianism ‘plays it by ear’ and lives for today. It focuses on the one-off choice and the case-by-case assessment. It is a short-term patch rather than a long-term solution. It is the standard approach of the maximising economics. It is the window on the world of John Maynard Keynes. Keynes (1923: 80) calls the long run ‘a misleading guide to current affairs’: ‘In the long run we are all dead’. Keynes recommends that economists should rank the ad hoc in the hand above the unknowable in the void.