CAPITALISM IS A JUST AND FAIR SYSTEM

RAWLSIAN JUSTICE SHOULD BE REJECTED

1. RAWLS’ “VEIL OF IGNORANCE” IS PHILOSOPHICALLY FLAWED

Robert Nozick, libertarian philosopher. ANARCHY, STATE AND UTOPIA, 1974, pp. 198-9. A procedure that founds principles of distributive justice on what rational persons who know nothing about themselves or their histories would agree to guarantees that end-state principles of justice will be taken as fundamental. Perhaps some historical principles of justice are derivable from end-state principles, as the utilitarian tries to derive individual rights, prohibitions on punishing the innocent, and so forth, from his end-state principle; perhaps such arguments can be constructed even for the entitlement principle. But no historical principle, it seems, could be agreed to in the first instance by the participants in Rawls’ original position. For people meeting together behind a veil of ignorance to decide who gets what, knowing nothing about any special entitlements people may have, will treat anything to be distributed as manna from heaven.
2. RAWLS’ ASSUMES SOME PEOPLE HAVE THE RIGHT TO CHOOSE FOR ALL OTHERS

Robert Nozick, libertarian philosopher. ANARCHY, STATE AND UTOPIA, 1974, p. 199. Do the people in the original position ever wonder why they have the right to decide how everything is to be divided up? Perhaps they reason that since they are deciding this question, they must assume they are entitled to do so; and so particular people cant have particular entitlements to holdings (for then they wouldn’t have the right to decide together how all holdings are to be divided); and hence everything legitimately may be treated like manna from heaven.

Robert Nozick, libertarian philosopher. ANARCHY, STATE AND UTOPIA, 1974, p. 202. People in the original position either directly agree to an end-state distribution or they agree to a principle; if they agree to a principle, they do it solely on the basis of considerations about end-state distributions. The fundamental principles they agree to, the ones they can all converge in agreeing upon, must be end-state principles. Rawls’ construction is incapable of yielding an entitlement or historical conception of distributive justice.

Robert Nozick, libertarian philosopher. ANARCHY, STATE AND UTOPIA, 1974, p. 214.

So denigrating a person’s autonomy and prime responsibility for his actions is a risky line to take for a theory that otherwise wishes to buttress the dignity and self-respect of autonomous beings; especially for a theory that founds so much (including a theory of the good) upon persons’ choices. One doubts that the unexalted picture of human beings Rawls’ theory presupposes and rests upon can be made to fit together with the view of human dignity it is designed to lead and to embody.

ECONOMIC REDISTRIBUTION IS IMMORAL AND INFEASIBLE

1. ALL FORCED DISTRIBUTION VIOLATES PEOPLE’S RIGHTS

Robert Nozick, libertarian philosopher. ANARCHY, STATE AND UTOPIA, 1974, p. 163.

The general point illustrated by the Wilt Chamberlain example and the example of the entrepreneur in a socialist society is that no end-state principle or distributional patterned principle of justice can be continuously realized without continuous interference with people’s lives. Any favored pattern would be transformed into one unfavored by the principle, by people choosing to act in various ways; for example, by people exchanging goods and services with other people, or giving things to other people, things the transferors are entitled to under the favored distributional pattern. To maintain a pattern one must either continuously interfere to stop people from transferring resources as they wish to, or continually (or periodically) interfere to take from some persons resources that others for some reason choose to transfer to them.

Robert Nozick, libertarian philosopher. ANARCHY, STATE AND UTOPIA, 1974, pp. 149-50. So it is an open question, at least, whether redistribution should take place; whether we should go against what has already been done once, though poorly. However, we are not in the position of children who have been given portions of pie by someone who now makes last minute adjustments to rectify careless cutting. There is no central distribution, no person or group entitled to control all the resources, jointly deciding how they are to be doled out. What each person gets, he gets from others who give to him in exchange for something, or as a gift. In a free society, diverse persons control different resources, and new holdings arise out of voluntary exchanges and actions of persons. There is no more a distributing or distribution of shares than there is a distributing of mates in a society in which persons choose whom they shall many. The total result is the product of many individual decisions which the different individuals involved are entitled to make.

Robert Nozick, libertarian philosopher. ANARCHY, STATE AND UTOPIA, 1974, pp. 168-9. From the point of view of an entitlement theory, redistribution is a serious matter indeed, involving, as it does, the violation of people’s rights. (An exception is those takings that fall under the principle of the rectification of injustices). From other points of view, it is also serious. Taxation of earnings from labor is on a par with forced labor.