franka@mmintl.UUCP (Frank Adams) (01/28/86)
In article <524@hounx.UUCP> kort@hounx.UUCP (B.KORT) writes: >There is an interesting result, due to the Nobel Prize Winning Economist, >Kenneth Arrow, that the process of finding social consensus is an elusive >goal. In Arrow's famous Impossibility Theorem, he shows that there does >not exist a function, meeting a handful of reasonable and desirable criteria, >which amalgamates the collection individual preferences into a master >ordering for society as a whole. The nonexistence of the so-called Social >Welfare Function is a surprising result which dashes our hopes of achieving >consensus without some a priori constraint on individual preferences. I think you are overstating Arrow's result here. His results show that there is no Social Welfare Function derivable from individual preference lists. This is not equivalent to there being no Social Welfare at all. If one assumes that individual preferences can be quantized, and not just ordered, then there certainly is a Social Welfare Function. The problem with this in practice is that it is difficult to get an accurate measure of quantitative preferences. In particular, just asking people doesn't work (at least if the results of the poll or election are to be used to influence what is done), since there is every incentive to exaggerate the intensity of one's preference. This, I think, is the fundamental problem of democratic political systems. Representative democracy goes a long way towards solving it. Given two candidates for office, one is likely to agree with one of them on some issues, and disagree on others. One's decision on which to vote for is not based on how many issues one agrees with each on, but on how strongly one feels about those issues. (This is neglecting personalities, which are also a factor.) ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This discussion belongs in net.politics.theory. I have cross-posted this article; follow-ups should be to net.politics.theory only. Frank Adams ihpn4!philabs!pwa-b!mmintl!franka Multimate International 52 Oakland Ave North E. Hartford, CT 06108