Seeking plausible-but-surprising fictional ethics

How badly could a reasonably intelligent follower of the selfish creed, "Maximize my QALYs", be manhandled into some unpleasant parallel to a Pascal's Mugging?

How many rules-of-thumb are there, which provide answers to ethical problems such as Trolley Problems, give answers that allow the user to avoid being lynched by an angry mob, and don't require more than moderate mathematical skill to apply?

Could Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs be used to form the basis of a multi-tiered variant of utilitarianism?

Would trying to look at ethics from an Outside View such as, say, a soft-SF rubber-forehead alien suggest any useful, novel approaches to such problems?

(I'm writing a story, and looking for inspiration to finalize a character's ethical system, and the consequences thereof. I'm trying to stick to the rules of reality, including of sociology, so am having some trouble coming up with a set of ethics that isn't strictly worse than the ones I know of already, and is reasonably novel to someone who's read the Sequences. Other than this post, my next approach will be to try to work out the economic system being used, and then which virtues would allow a member to profit - somewhat unsatisfying, but probably good enough if nobody here can suggest something better. So: can you suggest something better? :) )