 A more sophisticated problem outlined by Hodgson (1967: 38) and others is that a promising convention is broadly speaking incompatible with an act utilitarian society. This is so because such a convention couldn’t get established (or couldn’t be sustained) if people were aware that everyone was a consistent utility maximizer of the act utilitarian sort. If this were the case people would put no stock in promises, knowing that when the time came to keep the promise, the promisor would simply apply the utilitarian calculus, without regard to the fact that he had previously “promised”, as this is what being an act utilitarian means.