Can Utilitarianism be Operationalized?

نویسنده

  • William R. Zame
چکیده

The Utilitarian ideal is equal regard for all individuals — those now living and those not yet born. This paper shows that operationalizing this ideal is problematic: the existence of preferences that regard all individuals equally and respect the Pareto ordering is undecidable on the basis of the axioms used in almost all of formal economics; in particular, such preferences cannot be “constructed.”

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تاریخ انتشار 2006