 (iii) Equality distorts incentives promoting achievement in the economic field, and the administrative costs of redistribution produce wasteful inefficiencies (Okun 1975). Equality and efficiency need to be balanced. Often, Pareto-optimality is demanded in this respect, usually by economists. A social condition is Pareto-optimal or Pareto-efficient when it is not possible to shift to another condition judged better by at least one person and worse by none (Sen 1970, chap. 2, 2*). A widely discussed alternative to the Pareto principle is the Kaldor-Hicks welfare criterion. This stipulates that a rise in social welfare is always present when the benefits accruing through the distribution of value in a society exceed the corresponding costs. A change thus becomes desirable when the winners in such a change could compensate the losers for their losses, and still retain a substantial profit. In contrast to the Pareto-criterion, the Kaldor-Hicks criterion contains a compensation rule (Kaldor 1939). For purposes of economic analysis, such theoretical models of optimal efficiency make a great deal of sense. However, the analysis is always made relative to a starting situation that can itself be unjust and unequal. A society can thus be (close to) Pareto-optimality – i.e., no one can increase his or her material goods or freedoms without diminishing those of someone else – while also displaying enormous inequalities in the distribution of the same goods and freedoms. For this reason, egalitarians claim that it may be necessary to reduce Pareto-optimality for the sake of justice, if there is no more egalitarian distribution that is also Pareto-optimal. In the eyes of their critics, equality of whatever kind should not lead to some people having to make do with less, when this equalizing down does not benefit any of those who are in a worse position.