Mercado e igualdade: notas sobre o uso do termo "mercado" e uma crítica a Dworkin

Abstract

The article has two goals. Firstly, it tries to discern the meanings in which the word “market” is employed, sometimes as the lack of legal impediments to the freedom of contract, sometimes as relationships susceptible to supply and demand variations, sometimes as lack of coordination and sometimes, finally, as a “place” to the fulfillment of preferences. The second goal is to show how a disregard of these several meanings may truncate normative arguments about markets. To this end, the paper assesses Dworkin’s argument on the inescapability of markets for attaining equality of resources. It is argued that this argument is problematic in that, although drawing on the market being understood as a “place” for preferences satisfaction, it assumes, in a general way, that such desideratum could be achieved simply through the abolition of legal constraints to transactional freedom.