Existence cannot be exchanged, so welfare economics cannot price irredeemable loss

Evidence

The cornerstone of ethics is not the economists’ truth that tradeoffs are inevitable, but the more ancient truth, recovered brilliantly by Levinas, that “[o]ne can exchange everything between beings except existing.” Welfare economics dishonors this truth by assuming the assimilability of even existence into its calculus of choice; as such, nothing is left unrationalized within costbenefi t analysis to signify the irredeemable loss of a life. … This approach is doubly mistaken, for the interests of the needy are unknowable and the fortunate are already obliged, even before they prefer. — Douglas A. Kysar, Regulating from Nowhere, 515

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that nothing within CBA can signify irredeemable loss — and that the needy’s interests are unknowable while the fortunate are already obliged — condenses the whole book’s critique of value-neutrality into two dense propositions.
• SEED: An essay angle: what it means that CBA has no symbol for unrecoverable loss, versus regulatory frameworks that do (bans, prohibitions, moral side-constraints).
• recurring: this claim recurs 2 times within its source
• XREF: connects to: Environmental entitlements are meant to be law-created, not preference-derived — Douglas A. Kysar, Regulating from Nowhere: Environmental…, 309; Responsibility arises only in undecidable space that calculable programs try to close — Douglas A. Kysar, Regulating from Nowhere: Environmental…, 633; Welfare economics must deny its own incompleteness to sustain its optimization logic. — Douglas A. Kysar, Regulating from Nowhere: Environmental…, 269 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Economic value arises only through sacrifice and exchange #corroborates (0.82) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 245
• Exchange itself, not utility or scarcity, creates economic value. #corroborates (0.78) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 261