Douglas_Reay comments on Total Utility is Illusionary - Less Wrong
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Not quite. If our societal utility function S(n) = n x U(n), where n is the number of people in the society, and U(n) is the average utility gain per year per person (which decreases as n increases, for high n, because of over crowding and resource scarcity), then you don't maximise S(n) by just increasing n until U(n) reaches 0. There will be an optimum n, for which 1 x U(n+1) - the utility from yet one more citizen, is less than n x ( U(n) - U(n+1) ) - the loss of utility by the other n citizens from adding that person.