IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/rsocec/v67y2009i1p49-70.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Pareto, Consent, and Respect for Dignity: A Kantian Perspective

Author

Listed:
  • Mark White

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 wellbeing. 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.

Suggested Citation

  • Mark White, 2009. "Pareto, Consent, and Respect for Dignity: A Kantian Perspective," Review of Social Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 67(1), pages 49-70.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:rsocec:v:67:y:2009:i:1:p:49-70
    DOI: 10.1080/00346760802450553
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00346760802450553
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/00346760802450553?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Wilfred Dolfsma & Deborah Figart & Robert McMaster & Martha Starr, 2012. "Promoting Research on Intersections of Economics, Ethics, and Social Values: Editorial," Review of Social Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 70(2), pages 155-163, June.
    2. Michael Carr & Aurelie Charles & Wilfred Dolfsma & Robert McMaster & Tonia Warnecke, 2015. "Effective Contributions to the Review of Social Economy and Social Economics—Editorial," Review of Social Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 73(2), pages 139-145, June.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:rsocec:v:67:y:2009:i:1:p:49-70. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/RRSE20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.