prior probability

Today (Nov. 22) is the 58th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Did the Warren Commission lie to us about Lee Harvey Oswald (i.e. the improbable “lone gunman” theory), or did the commission get it right? Either way, what if we could place bets on whether there was a conspiracy or not to kill the president? (As it happens, I propose just such a “retrodiction market” here.)

I am reblogging part 7 (see below) of my review of Robert Nozick’s “Anarchy, State, and Utopia” (ASU). Here, we proceed into the last section of Chapter 2 of ASU. Before proceeding, however, let’s recall two of Nozick’s previous conjectures — that “protection associations” will emerge in a state of nature and that these protection rackets will end up carving up their own exclusive zones, with a single dominant group selling protection in each territory. In the last part of Chapter 2, Nozick asks whether these dominant groups can be classified as “states” (or proto-states) or whether they are just extra-legal protection rackets?

Either way, I take objection to Nozick’s entire approach to the state of nature. Why? Because Nozick paints a picture of spontaneously-emerging and competitive protection rackets, but how can such a market exist in a state of nature, or as I wrote in my original post below: “… how can there be a market without some meta-protection agency to enforce the contracts made between individual buyers and sellers of protection? Instead of providing an answer to these fundamental questions, Nozick simply assumes them away. Like a good economist, he simply assumes into existence a perfect world of zero transaction costs and perfect enforcement of contracts, but a good economist might make a bad philosopher.”

Note: I will begin reviewing Chapter 3 of “Anarchy, State, and Utopia” on Monday (11/22).

I am reblogging part 6 (see below) of my in-depth review of Nozick’s “Anarchy, State, and Utopia” (ASU). Here, we proceed into section three of Chapter 2 of ASU, where Nozick makes a third conjecture — in addition to his two previous conjectures in section two of Ch. 2 (see my previous post). Specifically, Nozick conjectures that a single, all-powerful protection society — or a small group of territorial protection rackets — will eventually emerge in the state of nature. Once again, however, for the reasons I give in my post below, I take objection to Nozick’s third conjecture. Below is an excerpt from my original post:

“… Nozick doesn’t refer to the economic concept of ‘natural monopoly’; yet he is essentially arguing that protection groups are a kind of natural monopoly. If this crazy conjecture were really true, we would expect cities like Chicago or Los Angeles to have one dominant gang or a city like New York to have one single crime family, not five. While it’s true that gangs and crime families divide up territories and strictly enforce their turf, it’s not for reasons of natural monopoly or ‘economies of scale’. Rather, as soon as we gaze beyond the friendly confines of the Ivory Tower, we see that gangs, crime families, and protection rackets generally are organized … around family ties or for ethnic, linguistic, or other cultural reasons. But culture, family, and ethnicity are all missing from Nozick’s ahistorical account of the state of nature.”

I am reblogging part 5 of my extended review of Robert Nozick’s beautiful book “Anarchy, State, and Utopia.” (See below.) Here, we move into section two of Chapter 2 of Nozick’s magnum opus, where Nozick makes two conjectures. First off, he retrodicts the emergence of “mutual-protection associations” in the state of nature, and then he further conjectures that some people in the state of nature will choose to specialize in the adjudication of disputes. But as I explain in my review below, there is a massive blind spot in Nozick’s libertarian picture of spontaneous protection rackets and entrepreneurial enforcers: the lack of enforceable contracts in the state of nature. Specifically, what if the enforcers or hired guns in of one of Nozick’s “protection associations” are involved in a dispute with each other? What then?

I am reblogging part 4 (see below) of my extended review of Nozick. Here, we proceed into Chapter 2 of “Anarchy, State, and Utopia” — a chapter which has five sections. In the first section, Nozick identifies two natural laws that operate in the state of nature: the non-aggression principle — “no one ought to harm another in his life, liberty, health, or possession” (p. 10) — and the law of retribution, i.e. if a person in the state of nature harms another person, the injured party has a moral right to punish the transgressor. The problem with these two laws, however, is that there are no courts in the state of nature to determine what constitutes “harm” — so acts of private retribution will often produce endless cycles of violence. Also, what about the laws of kinship? To the point, isn’t the family the true source of the state and of natural law?

I am reblogging part 3 of my in-depth review of Robert Nozick’s “Anarchy, State, and Utopia” (see below). Here, Nozick joins a conversation that began centuries ago with Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean Jacques Rousseau, a conversation centered around “the state of nature” — a world without states or governments, a world without politics. But is a world without politics possible? For my part, what I find most troubling about this conversation is that most of the discussants, beginning with Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau, rarely talk about the role of kinship rules in the state of nature. Yes, there are no states in the state of nature, but there are families, kin groups, and elders!

Nozick is no exception in this regard. Instead of taking an anthropological approach to the state of nature, Nozick conjures up a hypothetical fantasy world that has probably never existed anywhere at any time. But as I explain below, there might indeed be a kind of method to Nozick’s methodological madness. In fact, when I read Nozick for the first time, one of the things that I ended up liking most about “Anarchy, State, and Utopia” is all the thought-experiments and imaginary scenarios that Nozick conjures up on page after page of his book. Perhaps thought-experiments are no substitute for empirical reality, but if I have to choose, I prefer a creative philosophical thought-experiment, one whose assumptions are few and openly stated up front, a million times over a complex and convoluted “empirical” paper full of contested and often hidden assumptions and impenetrable statistical jargon.

I am reblogging part 2 (see below) of my in-depth review of Robert Nozick’s “Anarchy, State, and Utopia.” Among other things, the post below explores the problem of coercion and asks, when is collective coercion against an individual ever justified? (John Stuart Mill, for example, famously argued that coercion is only justified to prevent harm, but how should we define the concept of “harm”?) Also, looking back on my original post from four years ago, I would pose several additional questions to my fellow readers of Nozick. Specifically, how should we define such key terms as “fraud” and “theft” and “contract”? (Under our Anglo-American common law tradition, for example, not all promises are legally-enforceable and not all acts of deceit are “torts” or civil wrongs.) Also, however those key terms are defined, the moral or legal “badness” of fraud or theft implies that people have a right to private property and a right to “truth”, so to speak–i.e. a right not to be lied to. But why is telling a lie wrong, i.e. a violation of one’s rights? More fundamentally, doesn’t my right to private property in X, by definition, deprive you of the right to X, especially if you haven’t consented to this arrangement? These are some of the questions that Nozick will have to answer as we proceed …