MEASURABILITY, COMPARABILITY AND SOCIAL WELFARE

Abstract

If everyone were indifferent between more and less and between this and that, the problems of allocating scarce resources would be trivialized. The necessity of choice, whether social or individual, would seem absurd. However, people persist in preferring certain “states of the world” to others. As a society is made up of individuals, it seems reasonable that a society's preferences should be “made up” of the preferences of its members. Therefore, any social welfare function, W, should be a function of the individual welfare functions, wi. That is,