Thursday, June 23, 2011

A filosofia de Nozick em 14 pontos

Antecedentes: The Ideological Turing Test, de Bryan Caplan, e esta entrevista de Paul Krugman.

The Turing Test: Who Can Successfully Explain Robert Nozick?, por Brad DeLong (via Marginal Revolution):

I would maintain that only liberals [i.e, social-democratas - Nota de M.M.] can successfully explain Nozickian political philosophy--certainly I have never met a believer in Nozickianism who can do so, and I expect never to do so.

Why? Well, let me sketch out the logic of Robert Nozick's argument for his version of catallaxy as the only just order. It takes only fourteen steps:
  1. Nobody is allowed to make utilitarian or consequentialist arguments. Nobody.
  2. I mean it: utilitarian or consequentialist arguments--appeals to the greatest good of the greatest number or such--are out-of-order, completely. Don't even think of making one.
  3. The only criterion for justice is: what's mine is mine, and nobody can rightly take or tax it from me.
  4. Something becomes mine if I make it.
  5. Something becomes mine if I trade for it with you if it is yours and if you are a responsible adult.
  6. Something is mine if I take it from the common stock of nature as long as I leave enough for latecomers to also take what they want from the common stock of nature.
  7. But now everything is owned: the latecomers can't take what they want.
  8. It gets worse: everything that is mine is to some degree derived from previous acts of original appropriation--and those were all illegitimate, since they did not leave enough for the latecomers to take what they want from the common stock of nature.
  9. So none of my property is legitimate, and nobody I trade with has legitimate title to anything.
  10. Oops.
  11. I know: I will say that the latecomers would be poorer under a system of propertyless anarchy in which nobody has a right to anything than they are under my system--even though others have gotten to appropriate from nature and they haven't.
  12. Therefore they don't have a legitimate beef: they are advantaged rather than disadvantaged by my version of catallaxy, and have no standing to complain.
  13. Therefore everything mine is mine, and everything yours is yours, and how dare anybody claim that taxing anything of mine is legitimate!
  14. Consequentialist utilitarian argument? What consequentialist utilitarian argument?
Contrariamente a DeLong, não diria que apenas "liberals" sabem descrever a filosofia de Nozick; já li algures um georgista descrever o nozickianismo de uma forma semelhante.

Já agora, um anarco-capitalista poderia descrever o pensamento de Nozick incluirndo uns pontos adicionais para explicar como é que do ponto 3 (e sem violar o 1) não se chega à conclusão que os Estados são ilegítimos e um anarco-socialista talvez tentar uma síntese, explicando o processo em que a partir de pressupostos que implicam a ilegitimidade do Estado e da actual distribuição da propriedade se chega à justificação do Estado e da actual distribuição da propriedade.

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