[dragonwriter]

> if they can be demonstrated (as in western Europe) to represent very large increases in the hedonic calculus, they are objectively superior.

The only way this could be true is the extraordinarily unlikely case where every individual provably had better experienced utility in one system than another, otherwise, the fact that there is no one objectively correct method of aggregating utilities across individuals to get a single measure of societal good means that there is no objectively correct ordering.