SEMAINE D ETUDE SUR LE ROLE DE L ANALYSE ECONOMETRIOUE ETC. 
20C 
respect for the person, the rights of the majority, or the rights of the 
minority? Whatever the solution to this fundamental problem may 
se, 1 do not see it in FRISCH’s paper. In any case, majority rule 
cannot give a valid and acceptable answer to every question. 
What exactly is social justice? To speak about social justice is 
quite appealing in public discussion. Everyone is for social justice. 
But my own experience has convinced me that social justice is 
accepted by different people in very different ways, and as far as 
[ can judge, evoryone accepts what is in his interest as just, but 
considers anything contrary to his interest as unjust. Reality, unfor- 
-unately, is such we must appreciate that there is no objective con- 
cept of «social justice » at all, but only the conflicting interests of 
millions of people. 
My convinction is that FRISCH’s paper oversimplifies very com- 
plicated and complex questions and that it is only in this way that 
1e can justify the central planning procedure proposed by him. But 
as he said himself at the beginning of his paper, simplicity can be 
questioned, and to simplify problems is not to solve them. 
7) In FriscH’s paper, everything is derived from the consider 
ation of a single preference function only. But as I have already 
said, we cannot consider only one preference function. And if we 
agree that in parallel with the social preference function we must 
‘ake individual preferences into account in some way, then there is 
10 longer a single preference function, but ten million, a hundred 
million, and, for the world, three billion preference functions, and 
‘rom this point of view I cannot see at all how FRISCH’s paper could 
work in reality. The question is much more complex, much more 
difficult. We econometricians must recognize that it is impossible to 
reduce the whole problem of social organization to a problem of 
central planning. 
In fact and in my opinion, only a decentralized organisation in 
an appropriate framework taking parallel account of a market econo- 
my and some central decision making by the government in its own 
sphere can provide a correct solution to this very complex problem 
"17] Frisch - pag. 13