Welfare Economics, Ethics, and Essentialism

Abstract

In this paper I shall propose the apparently heretical view that welfare does not depend upon a foundation of value judgments. I shall argue that the common,2 contrary, opinion is the consequence of a muddle; and I shall claim that my own opinion is consistent with the classical Robbinsian distinction between positive and normative economics. Throughout this paper, welfare economics means the new welfare . I thus take it for granted that our welfare is Paretean in the sense that all criteria involving interpersonal comparisons of utility are avoided; the argument does not apply to old , or Pigovian, welfare economics. The argument is, first, that the theorems of the new welfare need not be prefaced by judgments of value and, second, that attempts to base the new welfare on judgments of value only cause unnecessary difficulty and confusion. The argument will not satisfy those who, because they demand of welfare that it tell them what to do , understand by welfare a discipline necessarily founded upon value judgments, and therefore assert simply that my use of the term is not theirs. The demand cannot be satisfied, and the attempt to found the discipline upon value judgments only causes unnecessary trouble; but there may be a terminological problem. If terminology causes difficulties, the reader may substitute some