The stringent Pareto criterion is practically pointless once real-world frictions are counted.

Evidence

Even a policy that doubled the wellbeing of every member of society while making only one welloff individual slightly worse off would fail the stringent conditions of the Pareto test. Indeed, as Guido Calabresi has argued, once transaction costs and other realworld variables have been taken into account, there may in fact be no Paretoimproving policies available that have not already been adopted, at which point the Pareto standard becomes essentially “pointless.” — Douglas A. Kysar, Regulating from Nowhere, 276

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to LGST 1110 legal reasoning content on how idealized doctrinal standards break down under real-world friction — and to Kysar’s broader claim that value-neutral technique cannot bear policy weight. — connects to: Even ideal Pareto optimality smuggles in contested normative baselines rather than objectivity. — Douglas A. Kysar, Regulating from Nowhere: Environmental…, 276; Equity worries cannot be delegated to tax-and-transfer because no global redistribution institutions exist — Douglas A. Kysar, Regulating from Nowhere: Environmental…, 340
• SHARE: Good for a law-and-economics colleague who enjoys the Calabresi aphorism that even a uniform doubling of welfare fails Pareto.