While precessed by articles about Physiocrats and Classicalists, an introduction to the contributions made by one Jeremy Bentham will mark the beginning of our Contributions to Economics column, covering the contributions of many, many famous economists from the past and present.

Jeremy Bentham (1748 - 1832) was writing about the same time as Hume, Smith and Ricardo, and was an outspoken follower of the Classical school both from his moral and philosophical beliefs and in his contributions to the field of economics itself.

Bentham’s main contribution to the fields of philosophy and economics was that of Utilitarianism. Utilitarianism was the principle that the greatest happiness or utility was the most important, most valuable, etc., furthermore, such a belief led that people would strive to maximize their net pleasure (or, spoken alternatively: maximize their pleasure while minimizing their pain) - a strong origin for the theories of maximization. Utilitarianism is heavily studied in the field of ethical philosophy striving to answer the question somewhat addressed by Adam Smith: if everyone strives to maximize their personal utility, will the general benefit be maximized?

Bentham identified the fact that “communities” are truly just the conglomeration of individuals, and thus, the interests of the “community” are truly just the interest of the sum of the individuals.

The ideas spoken with regard to hedonism and Utilitarianism often led Bentham to an important contribution to economics - that of diminishing utility. Adding an additional cart-and-buggy to an individual who already possesses dozens is going to provide very little utility, but an individual who doesn’t have a cart-and-buggy may gain the benefit of being able to transport more, and otherwise increase their gain more. The effect of wealth in the production of happiness is diminishing, said Bentham. Diminishing marginal utility unquestionably supported a position of wealth redistribution when taken alone, Bentham supported this idea, saying that if you took an amount from someone with much money, they’d feel the loss less than someone who received it would feel the benefit.

Bentham rejected modern ideas of GDP and other metrics representing good measures of well-being or happiness, saying that money was not a good metric of people’s happiness. He called on politicians and moralists to discover a new metric of well-being, for the hopes of making morality an exact science were progressive.

Bentham introduced the idea of compensation for labour (”wages”) being simply payment for the fact labour is “painful.”

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