Academic

White on Pareto & Kant

By Lawrence Solum

Mark D. White (College of Staten Island) has posted Pareto, Consent, and Respect for Dignity: A Kantian Perspective (Review of Social Economy, Vol. 67, No. 1, 2009) on SSRN.  Here is the abstract:

This paper argues that the Pareto standard, by which policy changes are approved if they benefit at least one person and harms no one, is ethically questionable despite its nearly universal acceptance among economists and philosophers alike. As usually implemented, the Pareto standard bypasses actual consent, relying instead on hypothetical consent based on imputed measures of preferences or well-being. By so circumventing actual choice, the Pareto standard violates the respect for the dignity of autonomous agents, as emphasized by Immanuel Kant. If actual consent is obtained, however, the independent relevance of the Pareto standard is endangered.

Full post as published by Legal Theory Blog on October 01, 2008 (boomark / email).