Talk:Liberal paradox

message: This "paradox" is saying that you cannot have the Pareto principle and have freedom, e.g. the exclusive right to control what is done with your loaf of bread.  But this is just confusing people by using mathematical terminology to obscure an obvious fact -- you may benefit from choosing to sell your loaf of bread to someone else, if the price he offers is high enough.  That ability to give up your freedom to use the bread in exchange for something better does not mean that you do not have the freedom.  It is just one way of using the bread to benefit yourself -- you can eat it plain, make a sandwich, toast it, or sell it and use the proceeds.  Where is the problem?  There is no paradox. JRSpriggs 09:38, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I don't think this is the same as the paradox, because the pareto principle operates on the individuals preferences - therefore even though you think it doesn't better them, it's still according to their preferences, so they aren't being Pareto inefficient.  If the example below is a true indication of the meaning of the Liberal Paradox,  the problem is that a group of people making decisions that have outcomes that only affect a subset of them will come up with results that weigh what the unaffected people think the affected people should prefer as important as what the affected people actually prefer.  In many situations this will lead to pareto inefficiency (although it's possible that the preferences always coincide and so there is no problem...) Kybernetikos 10:15, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Liberal Paradox" is bogus 

message: The provided link to a blog where some pseudo-discussion about the issue at stake is totally irrelevant. Not the least piece of useful information can be gather from there. I would suggest its removal.
anon--86.133.242.240 12:59, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree. Brad DeLong's blog post misses the fact that the term Liberal is used to denote personal liberalism in Waldman's article (non-interference by the state in personal decisions -- like reading porn). He confuses it with economic liberalism. Liberalism means that no individual will be forced to act against their personal wishes. --sam 86.217.97.198 23:17, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Links

message: I removed this sentence from the introduction:
: Note that this refers to liberalism in the sense of new liberalism.
This was my (not logged in) attempt to make NPOV this sentence:
: Note that this uses the modern, or Socialist definition of the word Liberalism, and not the original definition of Classical Liberalism.
That in turn was written by 68.40.170.168 on July 4.
It doesn't seem to be born out by the article, where the only sort of socialism comes in as a desire for Pareto optimality. The liberalism itself is strictly about individual freedom. Perhaps people who know more about this (I just stumbled across the article looking up stuff about Sen) can decide whether this sentence is wrong, or whether instead the rest of the article needs to explain the background in liberalism better. For now, I'm going with the rest of the article. —Toby Bartels 03:01, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  What kind of liberalism? 

message: Consider a matching pennies game, with each player preferring win results over lose results.  Using the same logic as used in the article, player A's personal liberty means that that the joint preference must have both choose heads > A chooses tails and B heads and both choose tails > A chooses heads and B tails.  And player B's personal liberty means that that the joint preference must have A chooses heads and B tails > both choose heads and A chooses tails and B heads > both choose tails.  It is logically impossible to construe a joint preference which satisfies all of these.  Thus, liberalism as described is not only incompatible with Pareto efficiency, but just plain impossible.
Another problem came to me as well.  Consider the situation where both Alice and Bob actually have the exact same preference order, namely both to go > neither to go > Alice to go > Bob to go.  It would seem obvious that this should also be their joint preference.  Yet if one considers only personal liberties (both to go > Bob to go, neither to go > Alice to go, both to go > Alice to go, neither to go > Bob to go) and logical deductions thereof, there is no way to come up with the relationship both to go > neither to go, nor with Alice to go > Bob to go.  So even though both have the same desires, by this logic, they'll never come to a decision, each wanting to wait and see what the other does first.  -- Milo
:I like what you've said and thougth, it has made me think. Considering that the paradox has to have some insight, or it wouldn't carry the name of it's discoverer, I've come to some deductions about what the paradox must be about.
:You present two cases:
 heads, heads  >  heads,tails
       ^               v
 tails, heads  <  tails, tails
:in which the "horizontal strategy switchs" (represented by < and > arrows) would be made by player B, and the "vertical switchs" would be made by player A. As you well say, there's no way to construct a joint preference. It is evident from the diagram that no order relationship can be made with the states (keeping individual freedom), as there's no transitivity (in other words, the graph has a cycle). There's no Nash equilibrium, either. There aren't Pareto optimal states, either, as one can move from (heads,heads) to (tails,tails) and viceversa without anybody caring (and the same for player B winning conditions).
:But suppose that player A prefers (heads,heads) over (tails,tails). This added preference doesn't change the diagram, nor therefore what we've said about joint preference and Nash equilibria. But it does create a Pareto optimal state in (heads,heads).
:So I guess (I don't really know) that the paradox comes to say something like "even if a joint preference can be constructed, it may be incompatible with Pareto ordering".
:Your second case is:
 both go  <  Alice goes
    ^            v
 Bob goes >  neither go
:here you can make an order relationship, but, as you point out, it's not a total ordering but a partial ordering (there are state pairs which you cannot sort). I don't see where's the problem you have with this case. There are 2 Nash equilibria, both going and neither going, so if both are at home, they'll stay there, and if they are in their way to the cinema, they'll keep going. The Pareto ordering (which in this case is a total order, as both Alice and Bob have the same preferences) is perfectly compatible with the joint preference order. The possibility of them being stuck in a Nash equilibrium which is not Pareto optimal (neither go, in this case) is not as strong an assertion as saying that the Pareto efficiency orders two states differently from the joint preference order. That's what I think the paradox must be about. In any case, I've never studied the paradox, so maybe I'm wrong. --euyyn 17:51, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Involving Pareto efficiency unnecessary to create paradox 

message: Tafor correcting me. Thecurran 00:56, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Editing 

message: I wanted to read more about some of the proposed solutions but none of them contain citations, so I've added citation needed tags.  The summarizing sentence of that section reads a little like original research, or at least synthesis. 87.194.220.108 12:35, 2 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: If that is the case, the state (x,z) is already Pareto optimal and the better state in the joint preference (with full personal liberties), so there'd be no paradox in this case... (the states (x,x), (z,z) and (z,x) would also be Pareto optimals, although not Nash equilibria, as (x,z)).
*3: I don't understand wether A and B can choose their own w, x, y and z or not. --euyyn 19:01, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

text: I think that can't be possible by definition, since taxing the driving to force the driver to go by bike makes the driver worse off compared to the original position and is therefore not pareto optimal. --I (talk) 12:06, 8 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  The section on ways out of the paradox 

message: What happens, if they could decide together? Not individually... but, let´s say they call each other... Would that solve the problem? I mean, that is the theoretical way to solve externalities in free economy - assumed the negotiations costs are zero you solve externalities in the most efficent way. So, if the part of this article on externalities is the same problem as the paradox, than this could solve the paradox as well...  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.103.152.239 (talk) 00:18, 22 April 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  What if they can decide together? 

message: At present, there are three 'solutions' listed to the paradox: (1) restrict the domain, (2) allow contracts, and (3) allow contracts. I think that we should follow the formalism of the paradox more closely. (Of course, this will require adding a formal definition to the article!) The solutions would then come from changing the framework or denying at least one premise. Examples of the former: allow side-payments or contracts; examples of the latter: restrict the domain, allow non-Pareto-optimal outcomes, restrict liberalism.  Restricting the domain seems harsh, but Sen puts a good spin on it; restricting liberalism seems bad under that name, but when it goes by its usual name (dictatorship-over-pairs) it's not odd to restrict it in some way; Pareto seems fundamental, but a solution might not be 'far' from optimal. So this seems to be at least five 'natural' solutions.
CRGreathouse (t | c) 19:54, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Solving the paradox 

message: Hello again wiki community. I've submitted this solution before but the original paper wasn't yet published so it couldn't appear on the Article (: Welcome to Wikipedia. Sorry to rain on your parade, but I'm afraid we can't use your solution until it is published in a reliable source. Happy editing otherwise. Paradoctor (talk) 19:50, 6 July 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  A New Solution Through Dynamism 

message: I'm highly UNqualified to discuss this, but going just from the contents of the current article, (1) I'm certain that I more or less understand the basic concept of "nosy preferences", BUT (2) I wonder whether a preference's "nosiness" is always distinguishable in practice. I think it would be relatively easy in practice to mischaracterize someone's preference, in either direction - i.e. to make a certain preference look like a "nosy" one when it isn't, or vice versa. And I don't know if that even matters, so I'll shut up now. TooManyFingers (talk) 14:21, 6 October 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Nosy preferences" 

message: Until 2013, there used to be another example, which I thought was more positive than the  versions currently in the article.  It said:
Suppose Alice and Bob have to decide whether to go to the cinema to see a 'chick flick', and that each has the liberty to decide whether to go themselves.  If the personal preferences are based on Alice first wanting to be with Bob, then thinking it is a good film, and on Bob first wanting Alice to see it but then not wanting to go himself, then the personal preference orders might be:
*Alice wants: both to go > neither to go > Alice to go > Bob to go
*Bob wants: Alice to go > both to go > neither to go > Bob to go
There are two Pareto efficient solutions: either Alice goes alone or they both go. Clearly Bob will not go on his own: he would not set off alone, but if he did then Alice would follow, and Alice's personal liberty means the joint preference must have both to go > Bob to go. However, since Alice also has personal liberty if Bob does not go, the joint preference must have neither to go > Alice to go.  But Bob has personal liberty too, so the joint preference must have Alice to go > both to go and neither to go > Bob to go.  Combining these gives
*Joint preference: neither to go > Alice to go > both to go > Bob to go
and in particular neither to go > both to go. So the result of these individual preferences and personal liberty is that neither go to see the film.
But this is Pareto inefficient given that Alice and Bob each think both to go > neither to go.
     	       	Bob 	Bob	Bob
     	       	Goes	   	Doesn't
Alice	Goes   	4,3 	→  	2,4
Alice	       	↑   	   	↓
Alice	Doesn't	1,1 	→  	3,2
The diagram shows the strategy graphically. The numbers represent ranks in Alice and Bob's personal preferences, relevant for Pareto efficiency (thus, either 4,3 or 2,4 is better than 1,1 and 4,3 is better than 3,2 – making 4,3 and 2,4 the two solutions). The arrows represent transitions suggested by the individual preferences over which each has liberty, clearly leading to the solution for neither to go.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A00:23C6:148A:9B01:3D0B:F8DE:9F50:FBAC (talk) 13:58, 25 May 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Another example