Reflexión de dia

"The ultimate constraint that we all face is knowledge -- what we know and don't know. The knowledge problem is pervasive and by no means trivial as hinted at by just a few examples. You've purchased a house. Was it the best deal you could have gotten? Was there some other house you could have purchased that 10 years later would not have needed extensive repairs or was in a community with more likeable neighbors and a better environment for your children? What about the person you married? Was there another person who would have made for a more pleasing spouse? Though these are important questions, the most intelligent answer you can give to all of them is: "I don't know."

Walter Williams

(Bueno si, ya se, luego de leer estas palabras y pensar un poco..parecen obvias..pero creo que olvidamos nuestra ignorancia casi todo el tiempo...)

La injusticia de la desigualdad actual

A propósito del último libro de Amartya Sen, Alejandro Gaviria destacaba las críticas en la reseña de Herbert Gintis (en la página de Amazon.com del libro):

"I have two major criticisms of this book. The first is that Sen has not updated his model of the individual or his critique of the neoclassical model of economic man since his important contributions of thirty or forty years ago. You would not discover by reading this book that there has been a virtual revolution in economic thought concerning human nature starting in the 1980's with behavioral game theory, experimental economics, and more recently, neuroeconomics. We can now go far beyond Sen's rather diffident and anemic argument that people are not always completely selfish. Perhaps Sen considers this new research deficient in some way. Or, perhaps such empirical findings do not belong in the same league as the venerable Western and Indian philosophers he quotes so liberally. We simply do not know what Sen thinks about this, or what his motives were to ignore this rich vein of research of obvious relevance to his argument.

My second problem is a bit more fundamental. I am extremely skeptical concerning the whole approach to justice that has dominated analytical philosophy since Rawls' seminal A Theory of Justice. Sen critiques John Rawls, Ronald Dworkin, G. A. Cohen and other left-liberal thinkers on grounds of the impossibility of perfect justice. However, the real problem with these thinkers is that they believe justice is a matter of the distribution of wealth and income. This is not at all what justice means to most voters and citizens, who rather follow Robert Nozick in believing that justice consists in individuals getting that to which they are entitled by virtue of legitimate production, exchange, and inheritance. Serious thinkers must find the idea that ideal justice consists of complete social equality to be deeply repugnant.

In this view, justice is not fairness at all. Nevertheless, we can accept an entitlement view of justice and yet recognize that poverty, not some abstract inequality of income and wealth, is a real enemy of social wellbeing, not because it is unfair but because it is a preventable disease, like malaria, that we should not permit to inflict the young and innocent. Full social equality, then, is not a lamentable unattainable ideal state, but rather a thankfully unattainable monstrosity because it presupposes the absence of personal accountability and effectivity.

Sen's critique of the Rawlsian tradition is anemic and trivial. For this reason I find this book deeply disappointing. It is altogether too genteel in dealing with a philosophical tradition that deserves to be bitterly criticized, not gently reproached for its excessive zeal in the pursuit of an unattainable ideal."

Resulta curioso el giro que ha dado Gintis. En los 60s se le consideraba cercano al marxista y ahora termina elogiando(?) o reinvindicando las ideas de Nozick, uno de los mas famosos pensadores libertarios.

Sin embargo, fácilmente la idea de justicia de Nozick sirve para condenar la desigualdad existente en la mayoría de sociedades humanas en la actualidad y por lo tanto en un motivadoro o justificador del cambio. La distribución de riqueza actual NO esta basada para nada en "legitimate production, exchange, and inheritance"

Existieron y existen toda una variedad de elementos institucionales (leyes,subsidios directos-indirectos,falsos derechos de propiedad, etc) que han provocado la injusticia y desigualdad actual en la mayor parte del mundo por no hablar de guerras, actos de conquista y parecidas acciones de violencia.

No es cierto que el status quo de la distribución de riqueza que tenemos sea resultado de las diferencias naturales de los individuos ni que haya sido un proceso legítimo en la mayoría de los casos(y no creo que Nozick estuviera pensando en defender el status quo. El quería establecer una teoría de justicia que superara lo que percibía como errores de Rawls.).

El caso de la distribución de la tierra en Colombia es ilustrativo en este aspecto.

A nivel mundial este cuentazo de la "propiedad intelectual" es el ultimo acto de robo institucionalizado

No seré yo quien defienda el igualitarismo simplista y autoritario de Rawls. Y no lo haré. Pero vale la pena destacar que la injusticia actual en la distribución de riqueza también es fácilmente condenable con la teoría de justicia "libertaria" de Nozick.

P.D.1: Por cierto, las reseñas de Gintis en Amazon se han vuelto famosas. Aqui se pueden leer todas.

P.D.2: En este texto Gintis explica como abandonó el socialismo autoritario.