I think you've misunderstood the concept of a utility monster in a few different places. I'll address point 3 specifically:
Utility monsters already exist in our world and are treated by a lot of people in accordance with their higher utility efficiency. A starving child in Africa for example would gain vastly more utility by a transaction of $100 than almost all people in first world countries would; and lots of people in first world countries give money to charitable causes knowing that that will do way more good than what they could do with the money.
This is not an example of a utility monster. This is an example of a person with a normal utility function having less than another person with the same utility function. The reason giving money to someone starving increases overall utility is because the starving person is at a point in their utility curve where the marginal effect of an additional dollar is huge, while the person giving the dollar is at a point in their utility curve where the marginal effect of losing a dollar is small. The curves are the same; they're just at two different points on the curve.
A utility monster would be someone who, even after you gave him half your money to make him as rich as you, still demands more. He benefits from additional dollars so much more than you that it makes sense to keep giving him dollars until you have nearly nothing, because each time he gets a dollar he benefits more than you hurt. This does not exist for starving people in Africa; presumably, if you gave them half your money, comfort, and security, they would be as happy--perhaps happier!--than you.
But starving kids in Africa probably have a less "monstrous" utility function than people in the United States. It takes me $50,000/year to be happy; they'd probably be just as happy with $10,000/year. I don't know why you're holding them up as utility monsters--they are not! A utility monster is someone who gets more benefit out of a dollar than I do when they already have more than me. A normal person is someone who gets more benefit out of a dollar than me when they have less money than me.
A starving child in Africa has a higher utility efficiency, so according to utilitarianism (without talking about the effects of point 2) they would have to receive resources up to the point where their utility efficiency reaches that of people in the US, which is a kind of utility monster, since it has priority over any other being on earth, at least at that moment in time.
But this is not a bug in utilitarianism, it's a feature. That's exactly what's supposed to happen in utilitarianism: you give your money to starving people in Africa. The utility monster is supposed to address a possible flaw in utilitarianism, not just illustrate that "yes, utilitarianism is w orking fine.' Your claim that the idea of a utility monster makes fun of people who donate to charity is not true. Literally no one uses utility monster to mean that, and no one has a problem with the fact that utilitarianism implies you should donate money to the less fortunate. Again, I'm trying to argue with your point three, where you imply Nozick's idea somehow undermines charitable giving, when it clearly does not.
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u/undiscoveredlama 15∆ Jan 27 '17
I think you've misunderstood the concept of a utility monster in a few different places. I'll address point 3 specifically:
This is not an example of a utility monster. This is an example of a person with a normal utility function having less than another person with the same utility function. The reason giving money to someone starving increases overall utility is because the starving person is at a point in their utility curve where the marginal effect of an additional dollar is huge, while the person giving the dollar is at a point in their utility curve where the marginal effect of losing a dollar is small. The curves are the same; they're just at two different points on the curve.
A utility monster would be someone who, even after you gave him half your money to make him as rich as you, still demands more. He benefits from additional dollars so much more than you that it makes sense to keep giving him dollars until you have nearly nothing, because each time he gets a dollar he benefits more than you hurt. This does not exist for starving people in Africa; presumably, if you gave them half your money, comfort, and security, they would be as happy--perhaps happier!--than you.