International Trade
Mood:  on fire
Topic: Social Choice
This is part of the series, "Is social choice practical as an economic system in the real world?" What about international trade. How does social choice relate to that? The citizens' of a particular country would each have a consumption preference ordering. If it turned out that products offered from abroad were cheaper than those produced domestically, the social choice might indicate that those products were preferred. If so, would this not build up a trade imbalance and wouldn't this create a problem? Not necessarily. The country providing those products would either buy products from us or build up credits toward future consumption of products from us just as a country's holding dollars represents a claim on future consumption which is manifested when those dollars are spent. There would have to be some provision that those claims could not be all redeemed in such a manner as to jolt the economic system, but, as long as they were redeemed in a gradual manner, there should be no problem other than that the citizenry of the overly consuming country would have to be willing at some later date to become harder workers to make up for their previous laziness.

Can Social Choice Be Viable in the Real World
Mood:  don't ask
Topic: Social Choice
The question is "Would Social Choice as an economic system be workable in the world as we know it?" For instance, consider how people are hired for jobs. One goes to an interview with company A and if there is a match, company A hires employee (let's call him) B and everyone is happy. Wouldn't social choice depersonalize this hiring process? Actually, no. There is no reason why B's preference to work for a specific company could not be part of his preference ordering. Also no reason that company A's preference for employee B could not be part of its preference ordering. In other words company A would not just have to specify its desire for a generic employee but could specify person B in its preference ordering. In addition, the desire for B to work for A and for A to hire B is not an absolute in itself. What if company C was willing to offer B a lot more money. At some point B's enthusiasm for A would dwindle. This would all be reflected in B's preference ordering. A's enthusiasm for B would dwindle if C was willing to do the same job for a lot less money and so on. The point is that all this could be sorted out by amalgamating the sum total of individual choices to come up with an overall social choice in which not only individual workers but also companies would be better off.