Redefining Utility: From Efficiency to Good Feeling

Introduction Author: Lee, DongHun “All economic science is fundamentally concerned with human life, and with how people live, and feel, and think.” — Alfred Marshall Traditional economics often defines utility in terms of preference and efficiency – a cold calculus of choices and outputs. In classical theory, utility became an abstract measure tied to rational choice and Pareto-efficient outcomes, sometimes decoupled from any actual feeling of happiness. The result is an economic design narrowly focused on efficiency – maximizing output or wealth – while treating human well-being as an implied byproduct. This paper proposes a paradigm shift: redefine utility as “Good Feeling.” In this view, utility directly equates to the subjective well-being that individuals experience. Rather than a proxy measured only by choices or money, utility becomes the measurable good feeling people get from their lives and interactions. This reframing aligns with Alfred Marshall’s human-centric vision of economics – concerned with people’s lives and thoughts and feelings – and updates it for an era when technology can actually gauge those feelings. To ground this new utility concept, we center the discussion on three core values: Justice (정당성), Good Feeling (효용), and Agency (주체성). These values provide a more holistic, human-centered foundation for economic design. We examine how decisions play out over time, considering temporal discounting and opportunity cost, and how these affect the actual experienced utility (“Good Feeling”) in people’s lives. We also explore the technological strides that make subjective well-being quantifiable in real time – from affective computing to self-tracking apps – enabling a practical shift toward Good Feeling as the metric of success. Finally, we contrast this Good Feeling-based model with classical utilitarian and neoclassical economics to highlight how utility’s meaning and use are transformed.