Even ideal Pareto optimality smuggles in contested normative baselines rather than objectivity.
Evidence
Most obviously, the standard is built on the normative assumption that human individuals provide the only relevant metric for welfare analysis, as opposed to other interest holders, such as human generations, human communities, or even nonhuman lifeforms. … As Amartya Sen has noted, because Pareto optimality does not permit inspection of the underlying distribution of initial entitlements, “a society or an economy can be Paretooptimal and still be perfectly disgusting.” — Douglas A. Kysar, Regulating from Nowhere, 276
Categorization
- XREF: Core to the polyad’s environmental-justice thread: the exclusions of future generations and nonhuman life tie directly to Eco-Justice course content. — connects to: The stringent Pareto criterion is practically pointless once real-world frictions are counted. — Douglas A. Kysar, Regulating from Nowhere: Environmental…, 276; The norm of instrumental optimality can only derive its pull from non-optimizing considerations. — Douglas A. Kysar, Regulating from Nowhere: Environmental…, 117; Choosing a valuation metric smuggles in a contested baseline entitlement — Douglas A. Kysar, Regulating from Nowhere: Environmental…, 585 (+1 more)
- SEED: Possible essay angle: exposing the hidden normative baselines beneath supposedly objective efficiency standards, using Pareto and its exclusions as the case study.
Broader Connections
- Choosing a valuation metric smuggles in a contested baseline entitlement
#exemplifies(0.85) — Douglas A. Kysar, Regulating from Nowhere, 585 - Friedman’s positive-normative economics boundary cannot be trusted at face value
#corroborates(0.72) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1620