> the government could switch to a "utilitarian" point of view - minimize the number of lost lives
There's nothing "utilitarian" about this, unless you assume that:
(a) All people value their own lives equally
(b) Nobody places any value on anyone's life but their own.
(Side note: we know that both of those don't even come close to being true.)
Without those assumptions, a utilitarian point of view will show some pretty obvious biases against just killing the fewest people -- among other things, it will try to kill older people rather than younger people, and to kill people with the smallest number of relatives (who would be sad about a death in their family).
There's nothing "utilitarian" about this, unless you assume that:
(a) All people value their own lives equally
(b) Nobody places any value on anyone's life but their own.
(Side note: we know that both of those don't even come close to being true.)
Without those assumptions, a utilitarian point of view will show some pretty obvious biases against just killing the fewest people -- among other things, it will try to kill older people rather than younger people, and to kill people with the smallest number of relatives (who would be sad about a death in their family).