ConcludingRemarks

When Arrow proved his theorem, he regarded only non-comparable and ordinal individual preference as the informational basis for judgment. This means that his informational basis was restricted to one value: one’s own utility.

From the 1950s to the 1970s, Arrow still considered that social prefer­ence was a proper criterion to evaluate social states, and one should respect and follow it as a policy guide. After the 1980s, however, he came to believe that the consequences of both market and social choice are not always just, from a non-welfaristic point of view. For example, if a decision-maker does not have accurate information, he or she may not make the proper decision (e.g., there is a particular information asymmetry in decision-making on medical and educational policies). Though racial discrimination has been affirmed in the majority vote, Arrow regarded it as ethically wrong; for example, child trafficking must not be dealt with by the market and must not be affirmed by voting. Arrow, however, considered that social choice theory can be useful to deal with justice issues. He stated that it is collective choice under a veil of ignorance that can deduce a criterion of justice, because its informational basis is the individual welfare judgment that eliminates subjective viewpoints and such a procedure also satisfies both mutual respect and impersonality. A criterion of justice also includes non- welfaristic aspects (e.g., equal distribution of power and opportunity of choice and correction of inequality); therefore, we can say that, after the 1980s, Arrow's analyses contained non-welfaristic aspects. He also grad­ually came to believe that we must protect our fundamental rights, no matter how society tries to violate them. He did not regard rights or equality as mutually exclusive values and supported the pluralism of values; in other words, he sought a proper balance between several values.

We can learn about the limitations of welfarism from such a transition in Arrow's thought. Though he used the welfarist way as a tool to formulate market and social choice, if a number of striking examples are considered, it is clear that he did not ultimately consider welfarism as acceptable from the normative point of view.