[EM] difficulty of interpersonal comparisons in utility

[Brian Olson]

On May 21, 2004, at 4:07 PM, James Green-Armytage wrote:

>
> Gervase asked for comments on this paragraph:
>> "The concept of cardinal utility suffers from the absence of an 
>> objective
>> measure of utility when comparing the utility gained from consumption 
>> of
>> a
>> particular good by one individual as opposed to another individual.  
>> For
>> this reason, neoclassical economics abandoned utility as a foundation 
>> for
>> the analysis of economic behaviour, in favour of an analysis based 
>> upon
>> preferences [i.e. rankings]."
>
> 	I think that the key point in this paragraph is "comparing the utility
> gained ... by one individual as opposed to another individual".
> 	It is not hard for me to say "I prefer Nader to Gore, and Gore to 
> Bush,"
> and for Joe Schmo to say "I prefer Bush to Gore, and Gore to Nader." 
> But
> it is harder for me to have a basis to say something like "I prefer 
> Gore
> to Bush *more* than Joe Schmo prefers Bush to Gore. It may be true, 
> but it
> is hard to find out whether or not it's true, especially on a large 
> scale.
> You can ask people how much they care, but if saying that they don't 
> feel
> strongly means that their vote is simply reduced to a fractional 
> value, it
> seems unlikely that people will make such an admission.
> 	However, I may point out that it might be somewhat easier to say that 
> "I
> prefer Gore to Bush more than *I* prefer Nader to Gore." Thus, I think
> that it is more possible to prioritize your own preferences in 
> comparison
> to one another than to prioritize your preferences in comparison to the
> preferences of another person.

Well said. This argument goes back at least as far as the canonical 
work by Kenneth Arrow. In laying the axioms on which his conclusions 
lay, he argued that you can't compare utility _between_ people.

I say otherwise. We do implicitly compare utility between people. We 
declare them all to be equal. That's why the ideal has been "One Man, 
One Vote". (Unless you're a shareholder where the system is 'one share, 
one vote')

Given that we _can_ compare utilities between people, Rating systems 
become the natural basis, rather than Ranking systems.

Brian Olson
http://bolson.org/