宋圭武：“帕累托最优”状态应是一个无意义陈述

所谓“帕累托最优”状态，其含义是指，在一种经济状态下，若不存在一种办法，使其他人状况在原来基础上状况不变差的情况下，使一些人的状况在原来基础上有提升，则该经济状态为“帕累托最优”状态。目前，该范畴在经济学和社会学等领域都有广泛应用。这里本人认为，在宏观总体前提下，天下不存在免费的午餐，任何一种资源配置的实际变化都会有成本，都会涉及损害一些人的利益，所以，所谓“帕累托最优”状况应是一个无意义陈述。这里证明该问题的关键是：立足包含所有时间和所有空间的一个集合，在这个集合内，世界的福利总量必然是一定的，技术进步只是改变资源的存在形式，以货币为标志的财富只是财富的虚拟形式，并不真正代表真实的财富。在这样的前提下，若改变一种资源的经济配置方式，必然会存在利益受损群体。这有两种情况：一种情况是，从静态看，必然是存在一部分人会损害另一部分人的利益的情况；另一种情况是，从动态看，必然存在一个时间段的人损害另一个时间段的人的利益的情况。另外，从损害的效用看，要么是损害一个人的绝对效用，要么是损害一个人的相对效用，要么是对一个人的绝对效用和相对效用都产生损害。所以，立足时间和空间总体而言，任何一种资源配置状态其实都是“帕累托最优”状态，任何改进都会损害到一些人的利益。这里既然任何一种状态都是“帕累托最优”，则帕累托改进当然是不存在的，所谓的“帕累托最优”状态自然就是一个无意义陈述。这里需要特别注意的是，若消费者人数或生产者人数或二者之和数量很少，或商品种类或生产要素种类或二者种类之和很少，则“帕累托最优”状态在理论上是有可能存在的。但这种特殊情况不应代表一般情况，从一般情况看，或者在大多数情况下，“帕累托最优”状态应是一个无意义陈述。

作者：甘肃省委党校教授

Song Guiwu: The concept of "Pareto Optimal" state should be a meaningless statement

The concept of "Pareto Optimal" state means that in an economic state, if there is no way to improve the situation of some people without making the situation of others worse, then the economic state is a "Pareto Optimal" state. Currently, this concept has widespread applications in economics and sociology, etc. Here, I believe that under the macroscopic general premise, there is no such thing as a free lunch in the world, and any actual change in resource allocation will involve costs and involve harming the interests of some people, so the so-called "Pareto Optimal" situation should be a meaningless statement. The key to proving this problem is: starting from a set that includes all times and all spaces, within this set, the total welfare of the world must be fixed, technological progress only changes the form of resource existence, and wealth marked by currency is only a virtual form of wealth, Another situation is that, from a dynamic perspective, there must be a time period in which one person harms the interests of another person. Furthermore, from the perspective of the utility of damage, it can either damage a person's absolute utility, relative utility, or both absolute and relative utility. Therefore, from the perspective of time and space as a whole, any resource allocation state is actually a "Pareto optimal" state, and any improvement will harm the interests of some people. Since any state is a "Pareto optimal" state, Pareto improvement is of course not possible, and the so-called "Pareto optimal" state is naturally a meaningless statement. It is particularly important to note that if the number of consumers or producers or the sum of the two is very small, or if the number of goods or the number of production factors or the sum of the two is very small, then the "Pareto optimal" state is theoretically possible in principle. But this special situation should not represent the general situation. From the general situation or in most cases, the "Pareto optimal" state should be a meaningless statement.