The liberal paradox, also called Sen's paradox after the economist Amartya Sen who proposed it, is a result in social choice theory showing that no rule for aggregating individual preferences into a single social choice can simultaneously satisfy three seemingly mild conditions: that every possible set of individual preferences be allowed, that a unanimous preference by everyone for one outcome over another be respected, and that each individual retain at least one choice over which their own preference alone determines the social outcome. Sen's result showed that this minimal form of individual liberty can conflict with the Pareto principle.
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Statementno means of aggregating individual preferences into a single, social choice, can simultaneously fulfill the following, seemingly mild conditions 1 Classification
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1. Liberal paradox - Wikipedia
Introduction
no means of aggregating individual preferences into a single, social choice, can simultaneously fulfill the following, seemingly mild conditions
In Group: Social Choice and Voting Theory, Lead paragraph
The liberal paradox, also Sen paradox or Sen's paradox, is a logical paradox proposed by Amartya Sen which shows that no means of aggregating individual preferences into a single, social choice, can simultaneously fulfill the following, seemingly mild conditions: The unrestrictedness condition, or U: every possible ranking of each individual's preferences and all outcomes of every possible voting rule will be considered equally, The Pareto condition, or P: if everybody individually likes some choice better at the same time, the society in its voting rule as a whole likes it better as well, and Liberalism, or L (from which the theorem derives its gist): all individuals in a society must have at least one possibility of choosing differently, so that the social choice under a given voting rule changes as well.
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