I think it has been clear at least since Sen’s Paradox of Paretian Liberalism that there is at least some tension between Pareto criteria of efficiency, according to which preferences have unrestricted scope, and the idea that individuals should have a certain kind of sovereignty or decisiveness over their own actions. Sen’s original paper dealt with “meddlesome preferences,” that is, preferences about other people’s behavior, like the preference that other people sleep on their belly, or that other people not read Lady Chatterly’s Lover. As Buchanan pointed out, Sen’s paper seemed to equivocate between the idea of liberalism as having to do with deciseveness over entire states of the world, and elements of those states. But
. . .the rule of liberalism does not, and, indeed, cannot assign rights to choose among complete social states to anyone. Persons are assigned rights to control defined elements which, when combined with the…
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