Social mobility
Is social mobility good? (26 January 2011, Sector - why) Who could argue against lifting people out of poverty, rewarding individuals according to merit, and ensuring equal opportunities for all? Surely, a more socially mobile world is a more just world. But there's a price to pay for social mobility that other ways of looking at ethics highlight. The utilitarian approach to life, associated with philosopher Jeremy Bentham, always returns to a single question - what makes for more happiness in the world? Does social mobility achieve that? Well, it might.
But social mobility also produces dislocation. People migrate to cities and find themselves isolated from their family, and constantly having to make new friends - relationships that might be fun but not very deep. They may be richer, but are they happier?