prior probability

On pp. 153-155 of ASU, Nozick launches a powerful and stinging critique against “welfare economics” and equality-based theories of distributive justice. (Welfare economics is a branch of economics that purports to measure a society’s overall well-being or welfare at the aggregate level.) How does Nozick accomplish this heroic task? By drawing a distinction between two approaches to justice: historical or sequential versus time-slice or end-states. In the words of Nozick (p. 153, emphasis in original): “The entitlement theory of justice is historical; whether a distribution is just depends upon how it came about.” According to a time-slice approach, by contrast (p. 154), “all that needs to be looked at, in judging the justice of a distribution, is who ends up with what.” The problem with such time-slice or end-state theories of justice, however, is that they neglect just deserts. According to Nozick (p. 154), “Most persons do not accept current time-slice principles as constituting the whole story about distributive shares. They think it relevant in assessing the justice of a situation to consider not only the distribution it embodies, but also how that distribution came about.” In other words, a given distribution of goods will be just so long as the initial acquisition of goods and their subsequent transfer are themselves just, even if people end up with shares of different or unequal sizes. (But by Nozick’s own logic, couldn’t one argue that transfer and acquisition are not the whole story either?) We are fighting a cold, but we will try to continue our review of Ch. 7 tomorrow …

Nozick begins Chapter 7 with a point of terminological order. He explains why he prefers the phrase “justice in holdings” over the term “distributive justice” (pp. 149-150, emphasis in original): “There is no central distribution, no person or group entitled to control all the resources [of a society], jointly deciding how they are to be doled out…. In a free society, diverse persons control different resources, and new holdings arise out of the voluntary exchanges and actions of persons…. The total result is the product of many individual decisions.” Next, Nozick presents an outline of his entitlement theory of justice in holdings on pp. 150-153. Here, he notes that a theory of justice in holdings must address three issues:

1. The initial acquisition of holdings (the appropriation or ownership over unheld things or “justice in acquisition”);
2. The transfer of holdings from one person to another (or “justice in transfer”); and
3. The rectification of injustices in the acquisition or transfer of holdings (or “rectification of injustice”).

So far, so good! Yet, ironically, Nozick then concedes on p. 153 that he is not going to attempt the task of specifying the details of each of these three major areas of justice. Really? If he’s not going to delve into these details, then what in God’s name is Nozick going to do in the remainder of Chapter 7? We will press on tomorrow …

Credit: shama.paro (Agra University)

Let’s resume our extended review of Anarchy, State, and Utopia (ASU), shall we? Since we’re now ready to jump into Chapter 7, let’s begin by taking a look at the overall structure and organization of this chapter. This chapter is titled “Distributive Justice” and is divided into two sections. Section One contains eight separate subsections as follows:

• The Entitlement Theory (pp. 150-153)
• Historical Principles and End-Result Principles (pp. 153-155)
• Patterning (pp. 155-160)
• How Liberty Upsets Patterns (pp. 160-164)
• Sen’s Argument (pp. 164-166)
• Redistribution and Property Rights (pp. 167-174)
• Locke’s Theory of Acquisition (pp. 174-178)
• The Proviso (pp. 178-182)

Here, Nozick is going to present his “entitlement theory” of justice. Because of meetings and other commitments we have today, we will jump into Nozick’s entitlement theory tomorrow …

More North Korean prop-art here. Image credit: Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

Hat tip: @jayvanbavel

More details here. (Hat tip: Tyler Cowen.)

We’re hitting the “pause button” on our extended review of Anarchy, State, and Utopia this weekend, as we’re attending a conference at The University of Georgia. In the meantime, check out this screenshot from our Twitter feed:

The last two subsections of Chapter 6 (pp. 137-146) contain an extended digression on the problem of punishment and the possibility of “anti-punishment” (my term) via preventive detention in “resort detention centers”, one of my favorite Nozickian thought experiments thus far. More to the point, Nozick identifies some serious problems with Locke’s state-of-nature theory:

• Don’t all persons (not just the victim) have the right to punish wrongdoers in the state of nature?
• What happens when people disagree about the content or scope of their rights?
• How much compensation must be paid to persons who are prevented from exercising their rights?

Nozick’s answer to the first two questions is the dominant protection association. Once a protection agency becomes the dominant one in a territory, it (the agency) will monopolize the right to punish and will settle disputes about the scope of one’s rights. Nozick, however, glosses over the possibility of conflict among protection associations in adjoining territories. With respect to the compensation question, although Nozick considers the two extremes of “no compensation” and “full compensation”, he falls back onto his principle of compensation: it is morally required that compensation be made for any disadvantages imposed on others. (See, for example, the paragraph on the bottom page 143.) Alas, Nozick does not specify how such “disadvantages” are to be measured or monetized.

We are now done with Part I of Anarchy, State, and Utopia. We are attending a conference in Athens, Georgia this weekend, so we will jump into Part II of ASU next week.

Unwittingly, Nozick contradicts himself and refutes his own theory of the state in the fourth subsection of Chapter 6 (pp. 133-137)! Recall Nozick’s previous claims from Chapter 5 of  Anarchy, State, and Utopia. In case your memory needs some refreshing, we will break down his main claims here:

• That a territory’s dominant protection association will eventually become a state or state-like entity;
• That the dominant protection agency in each territory will prohibit non-clients from enforcing their rights in their dealings with the clients of the protection agency;
• That the dominant protection agency will compensate these non-clients for this violation of their rights;
• That this compensation will be in the form of in kind protection services;
• That this process from protection agency to state will occur without anyone’s natural rights being violated, since non-clients will receive compensation.

Now, however, in the fourth subsection of Chapter 6, Nozick will not only contradict himself; he will also end up self-refuting his own theory of the state! How? By acknowledging — in an extended digression on the problem of double jeopardy — that sometimes victims of harms do not wish to be compensated for such harms, either in money or in kind, and by openly conceding as follows (p. 137): “As the person to whom [an] enforceable obligation is owed, the victim seems the appropriate party to determine precisely how [his natural rights are] to be enforced.” If these propostions are true, then why don’t they apply to non-clients of the state/dominant protection agency? For my part, I won’t gloat, as I’ve already leveled these same criticisms many times against Nozick’s unrealistic and speculative theory of the state in previous blog posts, such as this one on 1/5/18. In any case, stay tuned — I will conclude my review of Chapter 6 of ASU in my next post …

Nozick poses two additional questions in the third subsection of Chapter 6 (pp. 130-133). First, he asks whether individuals in a state of nature might agree with each other or unilaterally decide to refrain from creating or joining a protection agency, or in Nozick’s words (p. 130, emphasis in original): “… might not everyone choose to stay out, in order to avoid the [inevitable loss of freedom] at the end of the process.” (In other words, why isn’t option D (from our 1/9/18 blog post) the most likely equilibrium in the state of nature.) According to Nozick, such a possibility is not a stable equilibrium, since the state of nature is like a Prisoner’s Dilemma (p. 131): “each individual will realize that it is in his own individual interest to join a protection association (the more so as some others join) …” Really? If I join a protection agency, what guarantee do I have (especially in the state of nature) that my protection agency won’t turn around and violate my rights! (Roughly, this is the situation we have today with most civil governments.)

The other intriguing question Nozick raises is this: what would John Locke have to say about Nozick’s theory of dominant protection agencies? After all, as Nozick himself notes (p. 132), the process of creating and joining a private protection agency, an association that later becomes the dominant one in a given territory, “looks nothing like unanimous joint agreement to create a government or state,” i.e. looks nothing like a Lockean social compact. For his part, Nozick decides to define “social compact” (or social contract) so broadly as to include any ephemeral micro pattern of behavior, so long as the pattern is the result of voluntary actions, such as “the particular traffic pattern on a state’s highways on a given day” or “the set of customers of a given grocery store on a given day and the particular purchases they make” (p. 132). Again, really? Is Nozick simply saying that the tacit consent of each individual to drive on x highway or to shop at y grocery store at z time of day is a sufficient condition for the existence of a social contract to respect other people’s rights? Aside from appearing to look clever, what is gained by such feats of sophistic reasoning? Why not just reject Locke’s social contract theory and be done with it?