Part 36 of my epic review of Robert Nozick, which covers the last two subsections of Chapter 6 (pp. 137-467), formally concludes my review of Part I of “Anarchy, State, and Utopia.” In summary, Nozick’s thesis in Part I of his magnum opus has both descriptive and normative components. The descriptive part of Nozick’s thesis is that a plethora of protection rackets will spring up in the state of nature until one of them becomes the dominant one, monopolizing the right to punish and settle disputes about the scope of one’s rights. By contrast, the normative part of his thesis is that this dominant protection racket is morally required to pay compensation for any disadvantages imposed on others, though he fails to explain how such disadvantages are to be measured or monetized. My concluding questions for Nozick are below:

1. What is the moral baseline for deciding when someone has suffered a disadvantage?
2. How are conflicts between neighboring protection rackets resolved?
3. What role do families play in your Lockean state of nature?

Note that I have raised many of these same queries before (see here, for example), and further note that Nozick fails to provide satisfactory answers to them.