You seem to be wary of "collectivized" forms of utilitarianism, and for good reason. Philosophers have a lot of trouble aggregating happiness. In concrete terms, even if we had objective ways of measuring an individual's happiness, there's no escaping the possibility that one person's happiness might not be the same as another's, i.e., that utility is interpersonally incommensurable. Aggregate forms of utilitarianism seem problematically compatible with vast amounts of inequality ('utility monster' problem).

The problem is that utilitarianism doesn't seem very useful on an individual basis; very few actions affect just one person. When there are tradeoffs between person A's happiness and person B's happiness, it seems like we need something else to help arbitrate. Isn't this where desert comes in? And yet I haven't seen very many Utilitarian accounts of desert.

As someone who's evidently put a lot of thought into this area of philosophy, I'm curious what you think about the problems that attend any aggregating forms of utilitarianism, and whether those problems shake your belief in utilitarianism as a viable moral framework.