Bentham, Marx and Rawls ethical principles: In search for a compromise

•Three basic ethical principles are modelized by minimizing a p-metric distance function.•A satisficing approach is proposed to compromise these ethical principles.•The clashes between the ethical principles are quantified as the degree of sacrifice among them.

This paper demonstrates how the three basic universal ethical principles widely used in social choice theory, can be deduced as being particular cases of the minimization of a p-metric distance function. Once this logic unity has been shown, it is postulated how the three principles can be combined by formulating an extended goal programming model. In this way, possible clashes between the three principles can be quantified. This quantification could be interpreted as being the degree of sacrifice of some of the principles in order to reach the final consensus. The operational character of the approach is illustrated with the help of a simple numerical example.