From: shmage-AT-pipeline.com
Date: Tue, 15 Oct 1996 03:29:17 GMT
Subject: Re: pareto criteria


Howard, 
                  It seems to me that the main fallacy in these, and
similar, criteria that   
"presuppose, as acondition of their intelligibility, closed systems...it is
only if state of affairs x and state of affairs y are taken as fixed and
unchanging that these concepts are intelligible [and it is] equally true
that one's preferences must be fixed in order 
for these definitions to make sense" is that they effect closure by
freezing a dynamic reality at a timeless instant, like Zeno's arrow frozen
in flight.  To be intelligible, they would therefore  have to be
expressible as partial derivatives of a consistent set of functional
equations.  The assertion, however, that such preference functions exist in
social reality and remain constant over time is manifestly absurd.  It is
surely a grotesque form of the "epistemic fallacy" to take the [apologetic]
ideological convenience of a notion as suggestive of the existence of an
underlying mechanism that would permit such an unsupportable notion to
claim empirical reality. 
 
Shane Mage 
 
 
 
 
 
On Mon,Oct 14, 1996 2:10:40 AM, LH Engelskirchen wrote: 
 
>  
>  
>I have before me definitions of efficiency criteria: 
>  
>1.   S(x) is Pareto superior to S(y) provided no one perfers S(y) 
>     to S(x) and at least one person prefers S(x) to S(y). 
>  
>2.   S(x) is Pareto optimal provided there is no S(n) Pareto 
>     superior to S(x). 
>  
>3.   S(x) is Kaldor Hicks efficient to S(y) provided that the 
>     winners at S(x) could compensate the losers so that no one 
>     would then prefer S(y) to S(x) and at least one person would 
>     prefer S(x) to S(y).   
>  
>My question is this:  don't these definitions all presuppose, as a 
>condition of their intelligibility, closed systems?  In other words 
>it is only if state of affairs x and state of affairs y are taken 
>as fixed and unchanging that these concepts are intelligible.  
>Isn't it equally true that one's preferences must be fixed in order 
>for these definitions to make sense?   
>  
>But the universe of beliefs and preferences is demonstrably open as 
>is the universe of states of affairs.  What is the point of these 
>definitions, then?  Even on their own terms.   
>  
>Howard 
>  
> 
>