"John S. Denker" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Eric Rescorla wrote: > > > When there is a conflict between liberty and Pareto > > > dominance, economists get a headache. > > Really? Maybe some of them do, but I suspect most of > them wouldn't formulate it as a conflict at all; they > would just ask "how much do you want to pay for your > liberty?" I was thinking in particular of Sen's "Impossibility of the Paretian liberal".
> Example: Suppose you have the choice of either carpooling > to work or taking your own car, solo. The latter gives > you more liberty as to when you drive home. But it comes > at a cost. That's not the context in which I mean liberty. Rather, I'm talking about global restrictions. Consider the following situation as described by Steven Landsburg (http://slate.msn.com/id/46376/) Here's a stylized example: Suppose some people (call them the "prudes") cherish their freedom of religion, but not half so much as they would cherish a general ban on pornography. Others (call them the "lewds") cherish their right to read Lady Chatterley's Lover but not half so much as they would cherish a general ban on religion. Then if you outlawed both pornography and religion, you'd make everyone happier, while simultaneously making everyone less free. -Ekr -- [Eric Rescorla [EMAIL PROTECTED]] http://www.rtfm.com/ --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]