An Impossibility Result for Social Welfare Relations in Infinitely-lived Societies

This paper extends the analysis of liberal principles in social choice recently proposed by Mariotti and Veneziani ([6]) to societies with an infinite number of agents. First, a novel characterisation of the inegalitarian leximax social welfare relation is provided based on the Individual Benefit Principle, which incorporates a liberal, non-interfering view of society. This result is surprising because the IBP has no obvious anti-egalitarian content. Second, it is shown that there exists no weakly complete social welfare relation that satisfies simultaneously the standard axioms of Finite Anonymity, Strong Pareto, and Weak Continuity, and a liberal principle of Non-Interference that generalises IBP.Infinite utility streams, Individual Benefit Principle, leximax, Non-Interference, impossibility

Liberal approaches to ranking infinite utility streams: When can we avoid interferences?

In this work we analyse social welfare relations on sets of infinite utility streams that verify various types of liberal non-interference principles. Earlier contributions have established that (finitely) anonymous and strongly Paretian quasiorderings exist that agree with axioms of that kind together with weak preference continuity and further consistency. Nevertheless Mariotti and Veneziani prove that a fully liberal non-interfering view of a finite society leads to dictatorship if weak Pareto optimality is imposed. We first prove that extending the horizon to infinity produces a reversal of such impossibility result. Then we investigate a related problem: namely, the possibility of combining “standard” semicontinuity with efficiency in the presence of non-interference. We provide several impossibility results that prove that there is a generalised incompatibility between continuity and non-interference principles, both under ordinal and cardinal views of the problem. Our analysis ends with some insights on the property of representability in the presence of non-interference assumptions. In particular we prove that all social welfare functions that verify a very mild efficiency property must exert some interference (penalising both adverse and favorable changes) on the affairs of particular generations.Pareto axiom; Intergenerational justice; Social welfare relation; Non-interference; Continuity

Liberal Egalitarianism and the Harm Principle

This paper analyses Rawls's celebrated difference principle, and its lexicographic extension, in societies with a finite and an infinite number of agents. A unified framework of analysis is set up, which allows one to characterise Rawlsian egalitarian principles by means of a weaker version of a new axiom - the Harm Principle - recently proposed by [13]. This is quite surprising, because the Harm principle is meant to capture a liberal requirement of noninterference and it incorporates no obvious egalitarian content. A set of new characterisations of the maximin and of its lexicographic refinement are derived, including in the intergenerational context with an infinite number of agents.Difference principle, leximin, weak harm priciple, infinite utility streams

Evaluations of inifinite utility streams: Pareto efficient and egalitarian axiomatics

[EN]This investigation focuses on the aggregation of infinite utility streams by social welfare functions. We analyze the possibility of combining Pareto-efficiency and Hammond Equity principles when the feasible utilities for each generation are [0, 1] and the natural numbers. In the latter case, the Hammond Equity ethics can be combined with non-trivial specifications of the Pareto postulate, even through anonymous social welfare functions. As a consequence, any evaluation of infinite utility streams that verifies a mild specification of the Paretian axiom must exert some interference on the affairs of particular generations

Liberal approaches to ranking infinite utility streams: When can we avoid interference?

[EN]In this work we analyse social welfare relations on sets of finite and infinite utility streams that satisfy various types of liberal non-interference principles. Earlier contributions have established that (finitely) anonymous and strongly Paretian quasiorderings exist that verify non-interference axioms together with weak preference continuity and further consistency. Nevertheless Mariotti and Veneziani prove that a fully liberal non-interfering view of a finite society leads to dictatorship if the weak Pareto principle is imposed. We first prove that this impossibility result vanishes when we extend the horizon to infinity. Then we investigate a related problem: namely, the possibility of combining \standard" semicontinuity with eficiency in the presence of non-interference. We provide several impossibility results that prove that there is a generalised incompatibility between relaxed forms of continuity and non- interference principles, both under ordinal and cardinal views of the problem

Liberal approaches to ranking infinite utility streams: When can we avoid interference?

[EN]In this work we analyse social welfare relations on sets of finite and infinite utility streams that satisfy various types of liberal non-interference principles. Earlier contributions have established that (finitely) anonymous and strongly Paretian quasiorderings exist that verify non-interference axioms together with weak preference continuity and further consistency. Nevertheless Mariotti and Veneziani prove that a fully liberal non-interfering view of a finite society leads to dictatorship if the weak Pareto principle is imposed. We first prove that this impossibility result vanishes when we extend the horizon to infinity. Then we investigate a related problem: namely, the possibility of combining \standard" semicontinuity with eficiency in the presence of non-interference. We provide several impossibility results that prove that there is a generalised incompatibility between relaxed forms of continuity and non- interference principles, both under ordinal and cardinal views of the problem

LIBERAL EGALITARIANISM AND THE HARM PRINCIPLE

We analyse the implications of classical liberal and libertarian approaches for distributive justice in the context of social welfare orderings. We study an axiom capturing a liberal non-interfering view of society, Weak Harm Principle, whose roots can be traced back to John Stuart Mill. We show that liberal views of individual autonomy and freedom can provide consistent foundations for welfare judgements. In particular, a liberal non-interfering approach can help to adjudicate some fundamental distributive issues relative to intergenerational justice. However, a strong relation is established between liberal views of individual autonomy and non-interference, and egalitarian principles in the Rawlsian tradition

Liberal Egalitarianism and the Harm Principle

This paper analyses the implications of classical liberal and libertarian approaches for distributive justice in the context of social welfare orderings. An axiom capturing a liberal non-interfering view of society, named the Weak Harm Principle, is studied, whose roots can be traced back to John Stuart Mill’s essay On Liberty. It is shown that liberal views of individual autonomy and freedom can provide consistent foundations for social welfare judgments, in both the finite and the infinite context. In particular, a liberal non-interfering approach can help to adjudicate some fundamental distributive issues relative to intergenerational justice. However, a surprisingly strong and general relation is established between liberal views of individual autonomy and non-interference, and egalitarian principles in the Rawlsian tradition

Sufficientarianism

Sufficientarianism is a prominent approach to distributive justice in political philosophy and in policy analyses. However, it is virtually absent from the formal normative economics literature. We analyze sufficientarianism axiomatically in the context of the allocation of 0–1 normalized well-being in society. We present three characterizations of the core sufficientarian criterion, which counts the number of agents who attain a “good enough” level of well-being. The main characterization captures the “hybrid” nature of the criterion, which embodies at the same time a threshold around which the worst off in society is prioritized, and an indifference to equality in other regions. The other two characterizations relate sufficientarianism, respectively, to a liberal principle of noninterference and to a classic neutrality property