peteg's blog - choice - social choice - 2006 12 16 SenLiberalParadox

Sen's Liberal Paradox.

/choice/social-choice | Link

This proof is pretty straightfoward, but its implications are tricky to fathom. I tend to think that his notion of liberalism is pretty weird, and there's plenty of discussion on it. Again, while even Isabelle is convinced that the theorem is an analytic truth, there is plenty of doubt that Sen's mathematization is right.

For the keen there's an entire volume of Analyse & Kritik (1996 (18) Heft 1) dedicated to this topic. Eventually I hope to get around to looking at fellow Nobel laureate James M. Buchanan's criticism.

Onwards! — to the Gibbard-Satterthwaite theorem.