Mill argues that virtuous actions are those that have utility. However, how does society determine utility? In a heterogeneous society such as the United States, it may be difficult to determine one course of action that would increase the happiness of society more than another choice. For example, assume that the nation is equally divided over capital punishment. If we execute a criminal, half of the nation would have increased happiness while the other half would consider this act to be “generally injurious” to society. How do we choose between two sides whose utility values are approximately equal to the public happiness?
Mill’s theory of utilitarianism is very similar to Aristotle’s theory, which also claims that the ultimate end of human beings is to seek happiness, or utility, and that moral acts should contribute to happiness, not pain. After all, do we not institute rules and laws in order to make people happy? For example, paying your taxes does not make you immediately gratified, but we still pay taxes because we know that the effects of taxation will make us happy. Thus, it is an ethical thing to pay one’s taxes. On the other hand, utilitarianism is sharply contrasted by Kantian ethics, which argues that the intentions are more important that the consequences. Is not a man who dies attempting to save a drowning child acting more righteously than a man who saves the same child only for a reward? In my opinion, it would be the former, but Mill’s utilitarianism says the latter.

Throughout Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, contradictions abound in the portrayal of capitalism. Crusoe’s mercantile business summons the wrath of God and the seas, whereas his industrious labor on the island transforms him from incompetent to spiritual. Money evokes considerable controversy, with Crusoe vaguely describing it as a “drug,” simultaneously a useless commodity and an addictive narcotic. The ambiguity of “drug” in the novel characterizes Crusoe as an individual torn between disdaining money and idolizing it, and this depiction reveals how capitalism remains a respectable means to salvation despite its propensity to breed bourgeois avarice.
When Crusoe first encounters the gold and silver in the shipwreck, he exclaims with disdain: “O Drug! Said I aloud, what art thou good for?” In a literal sense, “drug” signifies a “commodity which is no longer in demand, and so has lost its commercial value or has become unsaleable”. Crusoe behaves as a rational capitalist actor by questioning the money’s actual worth in the absence of demand. In this situation, Crusoe articulates that he would rather take the physical capital of tools over the useless money: “Thou art not worth to me, no not the taking off of the Ground; one of those Knives is worth all this Heap”.  He abhors the money as an abomination, commanding it to “go to the bottom as a Creature whose Life is not worth saving”. In forsaking the “drug” for the tools, Crusoe carries both the ascetic Protestant ethic and the belief that the love of money spawns evil. 