On 6/26/07, Bill Lear <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
I guess you don't care what cost it is for a person to be raped. Where is that in your efficiency calculus? If we include the lives lost in the conquest of the Americas, that's, what, 50 million people, 10 million, 100 million? How much do their lives count? If you say these are included in "capitalism as a whole" (your phrase), then shouldn't capitalism as a whole be counted as incredibly inefficient?
using the Kaldor-Hicks efficiency criterion, if the European invaders could have compensated the losers in the conquest using the benefits of increased productivity that resulted, then conquest was an efficiency-enhancing change. The fact that the invaders did not compensate the invadees is irrelevant to this rule. using the Pareto criterion, on the other hand, the change was not efficiency-enhancing: even though the invaders better off, it made the invadees worse off. Pareto would not approve (though once the change had occurred, under the same standards it would be verboten to go back). -- Jim Devine / "Bong Hits 4 Jesus."
