Método de los elementos finitos (MEF) para el cálculo de estructuras

This argument has clear affinities with Hayek’s claims about spontaneous order. But it adds an important dimension. Like Paley’s defense of private property, Hayek’s argument for the free market is, in the first instance at least, a claim about the preconditions of economic efficiency. But Nozick’s argument about liberty suggests a more principled basis for rejecting patterned ideals of distributive justice in favor of a free market. Accordingly, Nozick elaborated a challenging theory of distributive justice to bring out the freedom-based rationale for a largely unfettered free market. The resulting conception of justice the ‘‘entitlement theory’’ combines Hayek’s notion of a social order constrained only by certain open-ended ground rules with an emphasis on respect for the freedom of individuals to form and pursue their own personal projects.8

Nozick’s entitlement theory is ‘‘unpatterned,’’ in that it does not require that distributive shares approximate any standard of merit, desert, or equality. But it is also (what Nozick called) a ‘‘historical’’ as opposed to an ‘‘end-state’’ theory of justice. An end-state theory assesses the justice of particular distributions at particular moments by reference to some set of criteria that specify what a just distribution ought to look like.

For example, a utilitarian might insist that, in order to be just, distributions of wealth must be shown to maximize utility. It is not clear (for reasons explored in chapter 2) what such a principle of utility maximi- zation could possibly mean, or what it requires by way of distributive shares (though it is worth noting that some utilitarians, citing the diminishing marginal utility of income, have argued that only quite egalitarian distri- butions are likely to satisfy the utilitarian standard). But however utilitarians settle these details, this view clearly involves an ‘‘end-state’’ conception of justice in Nozick’s sense. To determine whether a distribution is just, we here ask whether the current distribution meets a particular standard: Does it maximize utility? If so, it is just; if not, changes are required. Importantly, on this sort of view, the question of how the partic- ular distributions we observe at specific times came about is immaterial.

In contrast, ‘‘historical’’ conceptions of justice like Nozick’s entitlement theory assess the justice of present distributions by looking at the sequence of past transactions that led to it and asking whether they satisfied appro- priate desiderata along the way. In Nozick’s case, the relevant desiderata again following Hayek’s cue require conformity to certain ground rules defining and protecting individuals’ rights to own private property. These rules

regulate the terms on which agents may fairly acquire property (‘‘justice in original acquisition’’);

determine what counts as a legitimate transfer of property from one owner to another (‘‘justice in transfer’’); and

mandate certain forms of restitution when owners’ rights have been violated (‘‘justice in rectification’’).9

As long as the entitlements defined under these rules are upheld and not violated by any of the participants in the transactions leading up to a particular distribution, the resulting distribution is ipso facto just, under Nozick’s theory.

Although Nozick did not develop the entitlement theory in great detail, its broad requirements are clear enough to provide a challenging counter- point to the socialist view. Most importantly, it seems to reconcile the system of private property with our intuition that justice requires that

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individuals receive their due. For while it refuses to postulate some central agency of distribution responsible for giving people ‘‘their due,’’ the entitlement theory does not dispense with the notion of people’s receiving their due entirely. Rather, in keeping with Hayek’s conception of social cooperation as radically centerless, it reinterprets that notion in a decen- tralized way, requiring that, over the course of their mutual dealings, individuals respect each others’ rights to own, invest, and transfer their property as they choose. Responsibility for giving people ‘‘their due’’ is displaced from the center and left to individuals to fulfill in their direct mutual encounters.

So the entitlement theory replaces the question ‘‘What does the state owe me, as a matter of justice?’’ with the question ‘‘What do we owe each other, as free, property-owning individuals, in the course of economic exchange?’’ It answers that we owe each other respect for our rights as owners of property and for the freedom these rights bring. As long as private-property holders engage in transactions that do not violate these rights (i.e. through force, fraud, or theft), the patterns of wealth distribution that result are, on Nozick’s view, entirely just, no matter how unequal or undeserved they may be.

Despite this seemingly anti-egalitarian feature of the Nozickean view, there remains a sense in which it incorporates a notion of equality in the context of distributive justice. While it obviously rejects any requirement that individuals receive equal shares (this would presuppose both a pat- terned and an end-state conception of justice), the entitlement theory does require that agents recognize and treat each other as equals, in that individ- uals are to be regarded as independent and free, with their own lives to lead, and entitled to invest their personal assets and property in pursuit of their personal projects as they choose. It is also at least possible to maintain that free-market outcomes actually remunerate roughly in accordance with merit more effectively than any feasible alternative. True to his rejection of patterned theories of justice, however, Nozick did not advance this claim himself.