Kenneth Arrow: Individual

Kenneth Arrow was American economist. Explore interesting quotes on individual.

Kenneth Arrow: 74 quotes1 like

“I want, however, to conclude by calling attention to a less visible form of social action: norms of social behavior, including ethical and moral codes. I suggest as one possible interpretation that they are reactions of society to compensate for market failures. It is useful for individuals to have some trust in each other's word. In the absence of trust it would become very costly to arrange for alternative sanctions and guarantees, and many opportunities for mutually beneficial cooperation would have to be, foregone.”

Kenneth Arrow, “The Organization of Economic Activity: Issues Pertinent to the Choice of Market versus Non-market Allocation” (1969)
1950s-1960s

“The purpose of organizations is to exploit the fact that many (virtually all) decisions require the participation of many individuals for their effectiveness.”

Source: 1970s-1980s, The Limits Of Organization (1974), Chapter 2, Organization And Information, p. 33

“From the point of view of seeking a consensus of the moral imperative of individuals, such consensus being assumed to exist, the problem of choosing an electoral or other choice mechanism, or, more broadly, of choosing a social structure, assumes an entirely different form from that discussed in the greater part of this study.”

Source: 1950s-1960s, Social Choice and Individual Values (1951), p. 85

“We will also assume in the present study that individual values are taken as data and are not capable of being altered by the nature of the decision process itself”

Source: 1950s-1960s, Social Choice and Individual Values (1951), p. 7

“The idealist doctrine then may be summed up by saying that each individual has two orderings, one which governs him in his everyday actions, and one which would be relevant under some ideal conditions and which is in some sense truer than the first ordering. It is the latter which is considered relevant to social choice, and it is assumed that there is complete unanimity with regard to the truer individual ordering.”

Source: 1950s-1960s, Social Choice and Individual Values (1951), p. 83

“I want to stress that rationality is not a property of the individual alone, although it is usually presented that way. Rather, it gathers not only its force but also its very meaning from the social context in which it is embedded.”

1970s-1980s, "Rationality of Self and Others in an Economic System", 1986

“In this aspect, the case for democracy rests on the argument that free discussion and expression of opinion are the most suitable techniques of arriving at the moral imperative implicitly common to all. Voting, from this point of view, is not a device whereby each individual expresses his personal interests, but rather where each individual gives his opinion of the general will.”

Source: 1950s-1960s, Social Choice and Individual Values (1951), p. 85 as cited in: Gerry Mackie (2006) "The Reception of Social Choice Theory By Democratic Theory".

“Collective action is a means of power, a means by which individuals can more fully realize their individual values.”

Source: 1970s-1980s, The Limits Of Organization (1974), Chapter 1, Rationality: Individual And Social, p. 16

“As is by now well known, attempts to form social judgments by aggregating individual expressed preferences always lead to the possibility of paradox.”

Source: 1970s-1980s, The Limits Of Organization (1974), Chapter 1, Rationality: Individual And Social, p. 25

“In a capitalist democracy there are essentially two methods by which social choices can be made: voting, typically used to make ‘political’ decisions, and the market mechanism, typically used to make ‘economic’ decisions. In the emerging democracies with mixed economic systems Great Britain, France, and Scandinavia, the same two modes of making social choices prevail, though more scope is given to the method of voting and to decisions based directly or indirectly on it and less to the rule of the price mechanism. Elsewhere in the world, and even in smaller social units within the democracies, the social decisions are sometimes made by single individuals or small groups and sometimes (more and more rarely in this modern world) by a widely encompassing set of traditional rules for making the social choice in any given situation, for example, a religious code.”

Source: 1950s-1960s, Social Choice and Individual Values (1951), p. 1: Opening pharagraph