[zo1]

Have you considered approaching your dilemma from a moral perspective rather than a utilitarian/efficiency one? It may very well be that the two sides have different efficiency profiles, but one outweighs the other in terms of being more moral.

[existencebox]

At the risk of driving this question into the bowels of philosophy, I'm VERY hesitant to drive anything from a moral argument, because I don't trust most judgements of morality, my own included. I can establish the empirical success of certain things by many metrics, a moral metric is not one of them. (I have and do regularly approach the question of "what is the utility / what should be my preference in terms of a moral metric", but again this seems to be like the prior "great question of X" but where X is religion/philosophy instead of govt.)

There are certainly times when a moral argument is attractive (and which I would pragmatically chose, especially in the many cases when there are material impacts against which a certain moral stance would oppose) but if we're having a conceptual discussion, I generally avoid that, and even in the cases when I would support a moral argument, I often seek other justifications of more utilitarian nature to try and support the moral suggestion.

[dragonwriter]

> Have you considered approaching your dilemma from a moral perspective rather than a utilitarian/efficiency one?

There are an infinite number of possible moral perspectives; utilitarianism is one of them.