Optimal Group Decision Making Criterion and How It Can Help to Decrease Poverty, Inequality, and Discrimination

Traditional approach to group decision making in economics is to maximize the GDP, i.e., the overall gain. The hope behind this approach is that the increased wealth will trickle down to everyone. Sometimes, this happens, but often, in spite of an increase in overall GDP, inequality remains: some people remain poor, some groups continue to face economic discrimination, etc. This shows that maximizing the overall gain is probably not always the best criterion in group decision making. In this chapter, we find a group decision making criterion which is optimal (in some reasonable sense), and we show that using this optimal criterion can indeed help to decrease poverty, inequality, and discrimination. 1 Traditional Group Decision Making in Economics and Its Limitations: Formulation of the Problem Traditional approach to group decision making in economics. Traditional approach to group decision making in economics is to maximize the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), i.e., to maximize the overall gain n ∑ i=1 gi, where gi is the gain of the i-th person. The hope behind this approach. The hope behind the traditional approach is that the rising tide will lift all the boats, that the increased overall wealth will trickle down to everyone. Vladik Kreinovich Department of Computer Science, University of Texas at El Paso, 500 W. University El Paso, Texas 79968, USA, e-mail: [email protected] Thongchai Dumrongpokaphoan Faculty of Mathematics, Faculty of Science, Chiang Mai University, Thailand e-mail: [email protected]