Does this mean you reject notions of Pareto optimality? Does it mean you think that discussions of things like efficiency should not stand alongside things like justice?
If yes, why so? I thought notions of Pareto efficiency, were unproblematic. Shouldn't we desire a just *and* efficient economy?
Hahnel and Albert, in their *Quiet Revolution in Welfare Economics*, "find no fault with the concept of Pareto optimality as a formalization of the intuitive notion of social efficiency." (64) Elsewhere, Hahnel quotes Sam Bowles to the effect that, yes, there are other things besides efficiency that we must worry about:
Even if market allocations did yield Pareto-optimal results, and
even if the resulting income distribution was thought to be fair
(two very big "ifs"), the market would still fail if it supported
an undemocratic structure of power or if it rewarded greed,
opportunism, political passivity, and indifference toward others.
The central idea here is that our evaluation of markets -- and
with it the concept of market failure -- must be expanded to
include the effects of markets on both the structure of power and
the process of human development. As anthropologists have long
stressed, how we regulate our exchanges and coordinate our
disparate economic activities influences what kind of people we
become. Markets may be considered to be social settings that
foster specific types of personal development and penalize
others.... The beauty of the market, some would say, is precisely
this: It works well even if people are indifferent toward one
another. And it does not require complex communication or even
trust among its participants. But that is also the problem. The
economy -- its markets, work places and other sites -- is a
gigantic school. Its rewards encourage the development of
particular skills and attitudes while other potentials lay fallow
or atrophy. We learn to function in these environments, and in so
doing become someone we might not have become in a different
setting.... By economizing on valuable traits -- feelings of
solidarity with others, the ability to empathize, the capacity
for complex communication and collective decision making, for
example -- markets are said to cope with the scarcity of these
worthy traits. But in the long run markets contribute to their
erosion and even disappearance. What looks like a hardheaded
adaptation to the infirmity of human nature may in fact be part
of the problem.
Bill