We can summarize utilitarianism thus: Happiness is what matters, and everyone's happiness counts the same. This doesn't mean that everyone gets to be… - Joshua Greene

Utilitarianism is a great idea with an awful name. It is, in my opinion, the most underrated and misunderstood idea in all of moral and political philosophy.

We have no non-question-begging way of figuring out who has which rights and which rights outweigh others. We love rights (and duties, rights' frumpy older sister), because they are handy rationalization devices, presenting our subjective feelings as perceptions of abstract moral objects. (...) We can use "rights" as shields, protecting the moral progress we've made. And we can use "rights" as rhetorical weapons, when the time for rational argument has passed. But we should do this sparingly. And when we do, we should know what we're doing: When we appeal to rights, we're not making an argument; we're declaring that the argument is over.

From a utilitarian perspective, a good decision-making system is one in which the decision makers are more likely than otherwise to make decisions that produce good results. In principle, this could be one in which all decision-making power is vested in a single philosopher king. But everything we know of history and human nature suggests that this is a bad idea. Instead, it seems we're better off with representative democracy, coupled with a free press and widely accessible education, and so on, and so forth.