ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses several diverging paths of discourse. In the large, Amartya Sen disagreement with John Rawls seems to come to Sen’s rejection of the idea that ignorance can improve discourse. He would have discourse on social issues draw on the widest possible range of information, judging that in actual discussions ignorance is more likely to conceal and preserve abuses than to improve anything. The Ricardian socialist position was “Labor creates all value; therefore, all value should go to labor.” Since, in Thomas Hobbes’ tradition, social contractarianism is a justification of sovereign power, it seems to say nothing about the relations among subjects of different sovereigns. Recall the discussion of Pareto optimality as a criterion of social choice among welfare economists in the 1940s. Despite giving rises to some vigorous literatures, none of the influenced the consensus of economic thinking on welfare and policy in the current century.
