It's not clear that Pareto Optimality is very useful. Perhaps a case of not getting carried away by the name. As wiki puts it, "Pareto efficiency is a minimal notion of efficiency and does not necessarily result in a socially desirable distribution of resources: it makes no statement about equality, or the overall well-being of a society". Their example of a monopolist is useful: "It is important to note, however, that a change from an inefficient allocation to an efficient one is not necessarily a Pareto improvement. Thus, in practice, ensuring that nobody is disadvantaged by a change aimed at achieving Pareto efficiency may require compensation of one or more parties. For instance, if a change in economic policy eliminates a monopoly and that market subsequently becomes competitive and efficient, the monopolist will be made worse off. However, the loss to the monopolist will be more than offset by the gain in efficiency, in the sense that the monopolist could hypothetically be compensated for its loss while still leaving a net gain for others in the economy, a Pareto improvement."