One of the great attractions of Utilitarianism as an ethic is that it’s mechanical, and appears to remove the “subjective” element from the decisionmaking.  That is, a person can pretend they do not have to take responsibility for actually making a judgement about rightness/wrongness.  If f(x) = Greater Good, then x it is, and it’s not “my fault,” since I’m just running the equation f(x).

One of the problems with using Utilitarianism as your go-to ethic is that you can get a variety of results depending on the scope you set for the utilitarian function.  In math-y terms, f(x) for the set x = [1 to 100] gives one result, but for the set x = [101 - 577] gives another result.  In parental terms, if I’m solving for the greatest good for my child for today, I might choose one thing; if I’m solving for the greatest good for the family unit for today, I might choose another; if I’m solving for the greatest good for the family unit for the next 10 years, there’s yet another choice; and if I’m solving for the greatest good for my vision for humanity, then there’s another choice.

My observation in myself and others is that when our main ethic is utility, we happily absolve ourselves of agency and responsibility for our actions while simultaneously choosing the scope of the function that will get us exactly what we want.