Hard choice in Hondo.7 George is manager of an Ardnak Plastics plant in Hondo, Texas. It employs several hundred persons, a large fraction of the local workforce. George’s boss, Bill, telephones him from headquarters in El Paso with the news that the EPA will levy fines against Ardnak for excessive smokestack emissions at the Hondo plant. However, Bill won’t approve new scrubbers because the company can’t afford it. He points out that competitors have escaped EPA fines even though their emissions are higher.Upon investigation, George learns that the competitors avoid fines by scheduling their heavy emissions at night, when the EPA isn’t running tests.Meanwhile, Bill has been in touch with the Mexican authorities and mentions to George the possibility of relocating 15 miles south in Mexico, where environmental regulation is lax. This would necessitate hiring Mexican workers and devastate the economy of Hondo. He tells George that he must either avoid the fines or relocate. George therefore has three options:

(a) dump the pollution at night,

(b) relocate, or

(c) resign, in which case his successor will choose

(a) because it is the path of least resistance.

Assuming that

(a) is ungeneralizable, which of these three options pass(es) the utilitarian test?