Ever since I encountered Hicks’s Value and Capital while I was still a — Kenneth Arrow

"The problem I have with utilitarianism is not that it is excessively rational, but that the epistemological foundations are weak. My problem is: What are those objects we are adding up? I have no objection to adding them up if theres something to add. But the one thing I retain from utilitarianism is that, basically, judgements are based on consequences. Certainly thats the sort of thing we do in the theory of the single individual under uncertainty; you make sure utility is defined only over the consequences. I view rights as arrangements which may help you in achieving a higher utility level."

"We dont have much time left. We are moving towards temperature increases of around two degrees Celsius, which is going to have consequences in the tropics, and we will lose things like glaciers. Thats not a theory; its happening right now. Its not a prediction; its happening right now. But you just sightsee near those glaciers. But the glaciers are a big source of water. And on the questions of water, in California we store our water in a snowpack. When thats gone, the rain will be the same but it wont accumulate. With warming temperatures the snowpack will not work. It might be possible to substitute with dams, but thats complicated. This is conjoined with a big energy problem and I think that we really have to encourage development in this area. Just waiting for technological improvement wont work. We need to encourage it."

"Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem is quite surprising. It shows that three very plausible and desirable features of a social decision mechanism are inconsistent with democracy: there is no “perfect” way to make social decisions. There is no perfect way to “aggregate” individual preferences to make one social preference. If we want to find a way to aggregate individual preferences to form social preferences, we will have to give up one of the properties of a social decision mechanism described in Arrow’s theorem."

"For the voucher system to work, it would be necessary to have informed parents. One cannot be dogmatic without empirical evidence, but I would be surprised if the average parent has the time or patience or competence to digest the relevant information. Indeed, one wonders where the information is to come from and in what form it should exist. Do we use test scores, themselves affected by the selection processes of the students? Impressions of individual teachers or of the physical appearance of the school will tend to dominate."

"Child care has grown up under different circumstances than education and probably for a mixture of reasons, good and bad. There are many systems of child care, some private, some public. As compared with primary and secondary education, there is clearly less need for coordination. The sequencing of classes is much less important. It would appear that the ability of parents to monitor the conduct of the child care activity is much greater because the activity is much closer to everyday experience and knowledge. Most of the informational and structural arguments for the public supply of education are absent in the case of child care. Reputation and experience may suffice for adequate monitoring."

"Perhaps as important is the relation between the existence of solutions to a competitive equilibrium and the problems of normative or ."