I don’t really think of it in terms of deals, but in terms of world states. A world state might or might not be a Pareto improvement over another.
But then I guess I’m equivocating between deals and outcomes of deals . So when I say it wouldn’t be a Pareto improvement for Adam to give Beth his card, I mean that the world state “Beth has the card” isn’t a Pareto improvement over the world state “Adam has the card”.
(I don’t mean that Adam wouldn’t agree to the deal—that’s just not the question I’m pointing at. Though in this toy world, where taking the deal makes him worse off, I’m not sure why he would.)
I think that most takes would say that that is a Pareto improvement, and I think that when I disagree, I’m not just using the term differently.
If you judge the Pareto goodness of the state “Adam has the card” by all its possible futures, then no future can be a strict Pareto improvement, right? That seems like a drawback of using the term in this way.
I’m not sure why you think I’m doing that. I’m judging based on the assets people have and the affordances they grant.
In another thought experiment, we would say that money has no intrinsic value beyond what it can buy people. But if Adam gives all his money to Beth, who uses it to buy something, we probably wouldn’t say this is a Pareto improvement on the basis that Adam’s only lost something he doesn’t intrinsically value.
I think I’m using it in the standard way.
I don’t really think of it in terms of deals, but in terms of world states. A world state might or might not be a Pareto improvement over another.
But then I guess I’m equivocating between deals and outcomes of deals . So when I say it wouldn’t be a Pareto improvement for Adam to give Beth his card, I mean that the world state “Beth has the card” isn’t a Pareto improvement over the world state “Adam has the card”.
(I don’t mean that Adam wouldn’t agree to the deal—that’s just not the question I’m pointing at. Though in this toy world, where taking the deal makes him worse off, I’m not sure why he would.)
I think that most takes would say that that is a Pareto improvement, and I think that when I disagree, I’m not just using the term differently.
If you judge the Pareto goodness of the state “Adam has the card” by all its possible futures, then no future can be a strict Pareto improvement, right? That seems like a drawback of using the term in this way.
I’m not sure why you think I’m doing that. I’m judging based on the assets people have and the affordances they grant.
In another thought experiment, we would say that money has no intrinsic value beyond what it can buy people. But if Adam gives all his money to Beth, who uses it to buy something, we probably wouldn’t say this is a Pareto improvement on the basis that Adam’s only lost something he doesn’t intrinsically value.