The distribution of rights in society

In the few years since the publication of Sen's paper on 'The Impossibility of a "Paretian Liberal"', (1970) a remarkable outpouring of notes and papers has been circulated and published on the topic. Two recent papers, one by Gibbard (1974) and the other by Blau (1975), have addressed the issue raised by Sen in especially interesting and provocative ways. I think their proposals are not completely satisfactory in certain respects and so I venture here to propose a somewhat different way of attacking the problem. The resolutions that I propose to Sen's 'paradox' have their own deficiencies of course and one is left, ultimately, to judge which deficiencies are the least incapacitating. In the few years since the publication of Sen’s paper on ‘The Impossibility of a “Paretian Liberal”’, (1970) a remarkable outpouring of notes and papers has been circulated and published on the topic. Two recent papers, one by Gibbard (1974) and the other by Blau (1975), have addressed the issue raised by Sen in especially interesting and provocative ways. I think their proposals are not completely satisfactory in certain respects and so I venture here to propose a somewhat different way of attacking the problem. The resolutions that I propose to Sens’ ‘paradox’ have their own deficiencies of course and one is left, ultimately, to judge which deficiencies are the least incapacitating