An Important Concept
From Wikipedia:
Pareto efficiency, or Pareto optimality, is an important notion in neoclassical economics with broad applications in game theory, engineering and the social sciences. Given a set of alternative allocations and a set of individuals, a movement from one allocation to another that can make at least one individual better off, without making any other individual worse off, is called a Pareto improvement or Pareto optimization. An allocation of resources is Pareto efficient or Pareto optimal when no further Pareto improvements can be made.
I first learned about this in college, and it sort of captures personally why I have a hard time being impassioned about anything: there's a crushing awareness of the complexities that straddle the supposed intolerableness of any given injustice and suck the passion out of trying to change it.
In other words, I'm a Pareto-optimalist. A term I swear I didn't invent for "people who believe in Pareto efficiency as a principle for collective action".
Are you like, what the f*ck am I talking about? Consider Iraq. My viewpoint on Iraq is as follows:
#1. Iraqi's lives pretty much sucked.
#2. By invading, we made them worse, and by continuing to stay there and fight a counter-insurgency, we continue to make them worse.
#3. By leaving, we will probably make them worse yet again, and it's all the nicest people - people who believed the most in our nifty little ideals - who will ########## the hardest.
So what is there to believe in? I could never have been A Proud Defender of the US relationship with pre-invasion Iraq. Nor could I buy all the cr*p about the Free World At Stake. The invasion was a disaster. It probably didn't have to be - note, I would have dreaded and been suspicious of a success, even one that made Iraqi lives objectively better - but it was. However, our tentacles are deep enough so that pulling them out is probably going to hurt. So I can't be pro-surge, pro-mission, pro-anything. but I can't get excited about ending the war, either, because it's going to be almost as unpleasant as fighting it.
There's no room for a Pareto-optimalist, who believes in solutions that harm no one, (and if there aren't any, than heyyyy! Friday off! (Note: this is self-criticism)) in a world where any call to change tends to involve simplification, i.e. "lying" about the costs to someone else.
Pareto efficiency, or Pareto optimality, is an important notion in neoclassical economics with broad applications in game theory, engineering and the social sciences. Given a set of alternative allocations and a set of individuals, a movement from one allocation to another that can make at least one individual better off, without making any other individual worse off, is called a Pareto improvement or Pareto optimization. An allocation of resources is Pareto efficient or Pareto optimal when no further Pareto improvements can be made.
I first learned about this in college, and it sort of captures personally why I have a hard time being impassioned about anything: there's a crushing awareness of the complexities that straddle the supposed intolerableness of any given injustice and suck the passion out of trying to change it.
In other words, I'm a Pareto-optimalist. A term I swear I didn't invent for "people who believe in Pareto efficiency as a principle for collective action".
Are you like, what the f*ck am I talking about? Consider Iraq. My viewpoint on Iraq is as follows:
#1. Iraqi's lives pretty much sucked.
#2. By invading, we made them worse, and by continuing to stay there and fight a counter-insurgency, we continue to make them worse.
#3. By leaving, we will probably make them worse yet again, and it's all the nicest people - people who believed the most in our nifty little ideals - who will ########## the hardest.
So what is there to believe in? I could never have been A Proud Defender of the US relationship with pre-invasion Iraq. Nor could I buy all the cr*p about the Free World At Stake. The invasion was a disaster. It probably didn't have to be - note, I would have dreaded and been suspicious of a success, even one that made Iraqi lives objectively better - but it was. However, our tentacles are deep enough so that pulling them out is probably going to hurt. So I can't be pro-surge, pro-mission, pro-anything. but I can't get excited about ending the war, either, because it's going to be almost as unpleasant as fighting it.
There's no room for a Pareto-optimalist, who believes in solutions that harm no one, (and if there aren't any, than heyyyy! Friday off! (Note: this is self-criticism)) in a world where any call to change tends to involve simplification, i.e. "lying" about the costs to someone else.