prior probability

Nozick concludes Chapter 2 (pp. 22-25) of Anarchy, State, and Utopia with a hybrid definitional-theoretical question: Is the dominant protection association a state? That is, does the postulated dominant protective association (postulated by Nozick) rise to level of a minimal or proto-state, or is such a private group just a protection racket? (Recall that, according to Nozick, a number of protection rackets will emerge in a state of nature and that these protection groups will end up carving up their own exclusive zones, with a single dominant group selling protection in each territory.) For his part, Nozick defines the state in terms of monopoly (p. 23): “A state claims a monopoly on deciding who may use force when; … furthermore it [the state] claims the right to punish all those who violate its claimed monopoly.” With this definition in mind, he then proceeds to distinguish private protection rackets from states. First, protection rackets are not true monopolies, nor is it morally legitimate for a protection racket to claim a monopoly on the use of force, even in its designated territory. Why not? Because protection rackets are selective enforcers of justice. That is, unlike a true state, which (in theory) offers everyone protection from aggression, a protection racket protects only those who pay for protection. Moreover, protection rackets are able to offer different levels of protection and sell a wide variety of protection packages, or in the words of Nozick (p. 24): “Protection and enforcement of people’s rights [are] treated as an economic good to be provided by the market, as are other important goods such as food and clothing.”

Let’s pause a moment to appreciate what Nozick has just accomplished. In the course of a single chapter, he has solved a problem that has always troubled me, one that has plagued law and political philosophy for generations: How are the commands of a state any different from the commands of a band of robbers, pirates, or bandits? After all, the commands of both “legal” and “extralegal” entities are based on force and coercion, and both types of entities exist to promote the “common good” of its members, however differently the content of such common good is defined. Alas, although we agree with Nozick’s fundamental distinction between proto-states and mere protections rackets, we are totally unpersuaded by the main claim in Chapter 2. Yes, Nozick’s sketch of a spontaneously-emerging competitive market consisting of competing protection rackets is a normatively appealing (to us) picture, but how can this purely theoretical portrait be true? To the point, 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. Given his formidable reputation, we fully expect Nozick to redeem himself in his subsequent chapters, so we turn to Chapter 3 next …

In this post, we continue with our review of Anarchy, State, and Utopia (ASU). We have already reviewed Chapter 1 and the first three subsections of Chapter 2, so let’s just re-grab this philosophical bull by the horns and pick up where we left off. Although the fourth subsection of Ch. 2 contains an extended digression on “invisible-hand explanations” (an aside that could’ve been subsumed in a scholarly footnote or end note), this theoretical detour is by far our favorite subsection of the first two chapters thus far. Up to now, Nozick has left us scratching our heads in disappointment, for Nozick has assumed a Lockean state of nature (we prefer the gritty and ugly realism of Hobbes to Locke’s rose-tinted lens), and he has made many ahistorical and unfounded conjectures about the emergence of protection rackets (we prefer conjectures that can be tested in the real world). The invisible hand subsection, by contrast, introduces a new and helpful way classifying theories. In the words of Nozick (p. 19): “An invisible-hand explanation explains what looks like to be the product of someone’s intentional design, as not being brought by anyone’s intentions.” According to Nozick, a great example of an invisible-hand explanation is the invention of currency (p. 18): “No express agreement and no social contract fixing a medium of exchange is necessary.” Instead, a medium of exchange will emerge spontaneously, even in the absence of a state.

In addition, Nozick contrasts invisible-hand theories with so-called “hidden-hand explanations.” According to Nozick, a hidden hand theory explains unrelated events that are intentionally orchestrated by a single individual or group, while an invisible hand theory, by contrast, explains unrelated events in terms of some spontaneous mechanism lacking any pre-planning or pre-design. (Nozick further distinguishes between two different types of invisible-hand mechanisms–filters and equilibria–but we need not dwell on this technical distinction here.) So, what about “visible hand theories”? Would the “visible hand” be the state? For our part, as much as we appreciate Nozick’s distinction between invisible hand and hidden hand theories (and lament his omission of visible hand theories), Nozick omits the more important question of theory choice. Specifically, what criteria should one use in order to determine whether to accept a theory as true or not, regardless of how that theory is classified? (We will conclude our review of Chapter 2 of ASU later today and jump into Chapter 3 tomorrow morning.)

Image credit: Julia Suits

As a public service announcement, below is a listing of some science-related Twitter accounts:

Hat tip: @pickover

Today is our last day of classes, and we will be flying out to Austin, TX this afternoon to attend a teaching workshop. Our review of Chapter 2 of Nozick’s classic work Anarchy, State, and Utopia will resume on Monday, Dec. 4.

We continue our review of Chapter 2 of Anarchy, State, and Utopia. As we noted in a previous post, Chapter 2 is divided into five subsections. Here, we review the third subsection (pp. 15-17), which is aptly titled “The Dominant Protective Association.” Aptly titled because Nozick conjectures that a single, all-powerful protection society (or a small group of territorial protection rackets) will eventually emerge in a Lockean state of nature: “Out of [Lockean] anarchy, pressed by … market pressures, economies of scale, and rational self-interest, there arises something very much resembling a minimal state or a group of geographically distinct minimal states” (pp. 16-17).

Alas, Nozick’s conclusion is false. Strangely enough (given the plethora of economic jargon in the quote above), 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 (perhaps “arationally”) 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.

Worse yet (from a truth-value perspective), at the end of this subsection Nozick further speculates that an “outlaw agency” (an aggressive as opposed to defensive association that exists for the sole purpose of engaging in exhortation, pillaging, and plundering) will have a hard time attracting members. Once again, Nozick is off the empirical mark. After all, isn’t the real world (even with the existence of full-fledged states) full of such outlaw agencies?

Our previous post revisited the first section of Chapter 2 of Anarchy, State, and Utopia. In that post, we summarized Nozick’s comprehensive summary of three serious problems that could arise even in Locke’s idyllic version of the state of nature. To sum up, these practical problems, or what Nozick euphemistically refers to as “inconveniences,” could generate terrible injustices and could also potentially lead to endless blood feuds, to a Hobbesian war of all against all. In the next two section of Chapter 2 (pp. 12-15), Nozick offers up two bold but untestable conjectures. First, he posits the spontaneous emergence of “mutual-protection associations” (p. 12). That is, people in Locke’s state of nature will not sit idly by on their asses; they will proactively form protective associations or informal alliances in order to avoid the risk of endless feuds and protect their natural rights, such as the right to life and the right to own one’s personal possessions. (These alliances are informal because there are no courts to enforce contracts in the state of nature.)

Unfortunately, the emergence of decentralized and informal protection associations generates a whole new set of practical problems! Nozick spells these problems out on pp. 12-13. For example, everyone must always be on call to defend the rights of his fellow members, yet each member might be tempted to free ride on the protective efforts of his fellow members. But the most serious problem posed by the emergence of protective associations is intra-association conflict. That is, what if a member of a given association harms or injures a fellow member? How will the protective association handle a conflict among its own members? Here is where Nozick offers the second of his spectacular conjectures: the spontaneous emergence of specialization via a new class of private enforcers and private adjudicators (i.e. private police and private judges). In the words of Nozick (p. 13, emphasis in original), “Some people will be hired to perform protective functions [on behalf of an association], and some entrepreneurs will go into the business of selling protective services.” In other words, some people will find it worth their while to specialize in the detection, apprehension, and punishment of aggression.

In addition, Nozick conjectures that some people will further specialize in the adjudication of disputes. This way, if two members of the same protective association are in conflict, their association can hire a private adjudicator to decide who is in the right. Moreover, competing protection associations may also find it advantageous to hire reputable third-party adjudicators (before going to war) to make an extra-judicial determination of guilt when conflicts arise between the members of such competing groups. Thus, according to Nozick, the emergence of private enforcers and private judges will deter the occurrence of aggression and will reduce the possibility of endless feuds between the members of a single mutual protection association and across protective associations as well. But there is a gaping hole in Nozick’s libertarian picture of spontaneous protection associations and entrepreneurial enforcers: the lack of enforceable contracts in the state of nature. In other words, what if one of the protection associations and its own hired guns are involved in a dispute with each other? Who will enforce agreements made between a protective association and its private contractors?

Chapter 2 of Anarchy, State, and Utopia is divided into five separate subsections. Here, we will review the first of these five subsections (pp. 10-12), where Nozick summarizes Locke’s description of the state of nature and identifies three practical problems or “inconveniences” that could arise in a state of nature. According to Locke, the state of nature (i.e. absence of civil government) is governed by two natural laws. The first natural law is that “no one ought to harm another in his life, liberty, health, or possession” (p. 10), while the second natural law is the law of retribution. Specifically, if a person in the state of nature harms another person, the injured party has a moral right to punish the transgressor. But as Nozick correctly notes, these two laws of nature produce several “inconveniences.” One inconvenience is that men in the state of nature “will [tend to] overestimate the amount of harm … they have suffered” (p. 11), and this self-serving behavior, in turn, will lead to blood feuds or endless cycles of retaliation. (We call this inconvenience “the Hatfield and McCoy problem.”) Another inconvenience is the lack of credible commitment in the state of nature. In the words of Nozick (p. 12): “Any method a single individual might use … to bind himself into ending his part in a feud would offer insufficient assurance to the other party.” (After all, there are no courts or other legal institutions to enforce contracts.) Yet another inconvenience of the state of nature is that “a person may lack the power to enforce his [moral] rights” (id.). Specifically, “he may be unable to punish or exact [retribution] from a stronger adversary who has violated them” (id.). (We call this third inconvenience the “Pablo Escobar problem.”)

Chapter 1 of Nozick’s classic work “Anarchy, State, and Utopia“ poses the following “what if” thought experiment: What if we lived in a state of nature, in a world in which there were no actual states or governments? This hypothetical first-order inquiry, in turn, raises a methodological second-order question: Why does Nozick himself begin his book with such an abstract, theoretical query?

Nozick provides two reasons for his second-order query. First: because the choice between the state and anarchy is the most fundamental question of political philosophy. And second: because Nozick wants to explain how a state or government could in theory arise in conditions of anarchy. The key words here are “in theory”, for Nozick readily admits that it doesn’t matter to him how the first states or governments really arose. What matters, according to Nozick, is not whether a particular explanation of the state is true or not. (Indeed, Nozick himself, pp. 7-8, describes three ways an explanation could go wrong.) Rather, what matters is whether an explanation “illuminates” the existence of states and governments.

Alas, Nozick doesn’t explain how a “defective” or incorrect explanation could provide any meaningful “illumination.” Worse yet, Nozick makes totally unwarranted assumptions about the state of nature. Instead of assuming a Hobbesian war of all-against-all, he assumes an idyllic Lockean state of nature, one in which “people generally satisfy moral constraints and generally act as they ought” (p. 5). Yet, there is a method to this methodological madness! In the eloquent words of Robert Nozick (id.), “If one could show that [a theoretical] state would be superior to even this most favored situation of [peaceful] anarchy …, or would arise by a process involving no morally impermissible steps, or would be an improvement if it [a state] arose, this would … justify the state[!]” (Note: it appears that Nozick is not searching for a Humean or consequentialist justification; instead, he is looking for a non-instrumentalist or Kantian justification of the existence of states and governments.)

Credit: Kayla Ferguson

We interrupt our year-end review of Anarchy, State, and Utopia to share this story with our loyal followers: “When someone asked mathematician Richard Bellman how to tell the difference between an excercise and a research problem, he replied if you can solve it, it’s an exercise, otherwise it’s a research problem.” (Hat tip: @mathematicsprof, via Twitter.) Bonus material: Check out the TEDx video by Quique Bassat below on “Why research is cool.”

Before we jump into Chapter 1 of “Anarchy, State, and Utopia”, we want to return to Nozick’s preface one last time. The preface not only summarizes the main conclusions and methods of his book; it also calls out the intellectual dishonesty of most philosophical work. According to Nozick, when philosophers consider the great questions of philosophy, many pretend that their writings are the absolute final word on their subjects. But in reality, philosophers know that their works are full of “bulges” or unanswered questions, so (in Nozick’s words) the creation of a philosophical essay or book often “feels like pushing and shoving things to fit into some fixed perimeter of specified shape.” Worse yet, the bulges are masked or the cause of the bulge is thrown far away so that no one will notice. Nozick then conjures up a photographic metaphor to explain this form of philosophical dishonesty: “Quickly, you find an angle from which everything appears to fit perfectly and take a snapshot, at a fast shutter speed before something else bulges out too noticeably.” After a trip to the darkroom for touching up: “All that remains is to publish the photograph as a representation of exactly how things are, and to note how nothing fits properly into any other shape.” Nozick, by contrast, promises not to hide the bulges or weaknesses of his work. What a refreshing dose of candor!