[chrstphrhrt]

Are you saying the difference between quantity and quality is zero sum, or maybe more like dividing by zero?

I feel like Pareto efficiency only comes into the picture if the quantities are actually clear, but I don't understand how to make that concrete in ethical (not economic) terms.

The "rule" of "quality" seems like it can easily be abused by whoever is in power in the given situation. E.g. an assertion such as this could be valid: it's okay for police to shoot "innocent" people if "they were disturbing the peace".

Are quality and quantity both vulnerable to being gamed?

[perfmode]

pareto means optimizing one dimension without sacrificing the other.

the frontier is the points in space where neither can be further optimized without impacting the other.

[chrstphrhrt]

Yeah flashbacks from econ 101.. Was referring to the coherence issue of moving away from known quantities/dimensions.