I guess I was thinking that in the utopia with omelas...

Lets say that one tenth of the population are omelas and they suffer highly. Say... at 80 or something like that.

Now... In non utopian society... would two tenths of the population suffer more than 40? My thought was... That probably, yes.

In which case... On balance... One would be better off in utopia (if it was about minimising the amount of suffering according to the intensity number/duration scale I provided before).

Sure it isn't fair that the omelas suffer. They didn't do anything to deserve their suffering. We could argue about whether anybody outside utopia deserves their suffering - but we could probably agree that the amount of UNJUSTIFIED suffering outside utopia is higher than the amount of unjustified suffering within it.

I haven't even added a scale for happiness (and thought about how much happiness of some negates the unhappiness of others). Because... That is much more controversial...

But, I don't know... Maybe one thought is that bad as the omela situation is... It is still better than the way things are outside utopia. Perhaps...