[slg]

I am not a philosophy student, but I think you have that backwards. My last comment was fundamentally a utilitarian one as it is about maximizing efficiency and minimizing waste. You don't see utilitarians walking around talking about "a sufficient level of good for a sufficiently large group of people".

[workinthehead]

That's incorrect. In your original comment you referred to "a positive net result", which the utilitarian will always prefer by definition. Perhaps you are confusing utility with efficiency?

[slg]

>which the utilitarian will always prefer by definition

That is the heart of our confusion here. You are comparing it to a neutral state. Yes, a utilitarian would prefer any positive outcome to that. However, I was implying that there was another path that would have resulted in an even more positive result but through inefficiency we were left with a lesser but still positive result. That waste of resources like time and money is equivalent to a waste of utility that a utilitarian would obviously oppose.

[workinthehead]

> I was implying that there was another path that would have resulted in an even more positive result

Ah, the old "I intended the exact opposite of what I said" ploy.