V. Nozick, Libertarianism, and
the Social Contract
Property, markets, and morals
Distribution of Wealth
Consider:
 The richest 1% of the Earth’s population holds 46% of
the Earth’s wealth; the poorest half has 1%.
 In the U.S., the richest 1% owns 35% of nation’s wealth;
the poorest half owns 2.5%.
 Two Canadian billionaires hold wealth equal to that of
the 11 million least-wealthy Canadians…
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Redistribution of Wealth?
 In light of facts like this, many have demanded
redistribution of wealth as a matter of distributive justice.
 But can redistribution of wealth be morally justified?
Is taxation (the usual mechanism for redistributing
wealth) just?
The U Perspective
 Decreasing Marginal Utility of Money: A U justification
for redistribution could be put in these terms.
If we were to take $1M from Galen Weston and transfer
to it to, say, 100 low-income Canadians, Weston might
barely notice, but the recipients of $10,000 would be
made significantly better off.
 But, on the other hand…
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 Incentives: If redistribution reduces people’s incentive to
earn, produce, innovate, sell, etc., then, by U lights,
redistribution would be justified only if it did not start (or
only up the point where it starts) to reduce aggregate
wealth (i.e., the “overall pie”).
I.e.: Redistributive taxation would not be justified if made
the Thomsons and Westons of the world less productive
(of whatever it is that they are productive of).
 For U (as always) a justification for redistribution will
depend upon facts about consequences.
Libertarianism
 For libertarians, by contrast, the good (or bad)
consequences of redistribution are irrelevant.
Redistribution of wealth (at least in its ordinary form –
redistributive taxation) is a violation of individual
rights. It is fundamentally unjust.
 Individuals have certain rights, among them a right to
property. Taking my property without my permission is a
violation of my rights. In fact, it is morally tantamount to
slavery…
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The Social Contact Redux
 Where do (moral or legal) rights come from? What is the
basis of law and political authority?
 We’ve already encountered one answer: On Kant’s
view, (public) law and political authority are ultimately
based on reason: The law should aim at harmonizing
each individual’s freedom with that of everyone else.
 So, the social contract is purely hypothetical: It obligates
each citizen (each rational being ) “as if he had
consented.”
Rights and the ‘Social Contract’
 By contrast, theorists in the contractarian tradition – e.g.,
Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) and John Locke (16321704) understand rights (and political authority generally)
to be grounded in a different kind of rationality:
Instrumental rationality….
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Instrumental Rationality (IR)
Acting rationally in the economic sense = Acting so as
to maximize one's own expected utility (total expected
benefits less total expected costs) as judged for oneself.
Note: Being instrumentally rational does not require
that one be an egoist—it may be that you value other
people’s utility.
Nor is it equivalent to U—IR entails only that you
maximize for you, not for everyone affected.
It requires only that one “prefer more to less.”
Hobbes and the ‘State of Nature’
 In order to understand the nature of
rights and political authority, imagine a
condition in which these did not exist…
Hobbes
 In this pre-political state of nature (SON) there will is
absolute freedom…and a state of constant war, a “war
of all against all.”
In the state of nature, says Hobbes, the life of man is
“solitary poor, nasty, brutish and short”—it is not a good
deal for anyone…
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The Hobbesian Social Contract
The social contract is a tacit (i.e., hypothetical) agreement
among instrumentally rational individuals to give up some
of the liberty that they possessed in the SON, provided
others do so as well, in exchange for something that they
judge, by their own individual lights, to be more valuable:
In the political case: A system of legal rights guaranteed
(and enforced) by the state.
In the general, social case: A system of moral norms,
mutually enforced by everyone.
Detail from the frontispiece of Leviathan (1651)
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Why Accept the Social Contract?
One answer (Hobbes’):
Because it’s a better deal than the SON.
Another answer (Locke’s):
John Locke
Individuals have certain God-given, inalienable natural
rights to life, liberty, and property. Government exists to
protect those rights; governments that violate or fail to
protect those rights can (and morally ought to be)
replaced. (See, e.g., the American Revolution.)
Robert Nozick (1938-2002)
 A Lockean notion of rights lies at the
heart of Nozick’s influential arguments in
Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974)
 Those arguments support a strongly libertarian
conception of justice and government – a minimal, “night
watchman” state:
“…protection against force, theft, fraud, enforcement of
contracts, and so on, is justified; any more extensive state
will violate persons' rights...and is unjustified” (ASU, ix)
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The Entitlement Theory I
Nozick: In a wholly just world:
1) Any person who acquires a holding in accordance with the
principle of justice in acquisition is entitled to that
holding.
2) Any person who acquires a holding from someone else in
accordance with the principle of justice in transfer, is
entitled to that holding.
No one is entitled to any holding except by (repeated)
applications of 1) and 2)
The Entitlement Theory II
Since we do not live in a wholly just world, there are
actually three components to the overall theory:
1. Justice in acquisition of holdings
2. Justice in transfer of holdings
3. Rectification of injustice in holdings
Nozick: A distribution is just if it has arises in accordance
with these three sets of rules – i.e. “if everyone is entitled
to what they possess under the distribution”
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Types of Theories
Nozick asserts that all theories of distributive justice can
be categorized as:
(a) Either end-result or historical, and
(b) Either patterned or unpatterned
Nozick’s entitlement theory is historical and unpatterned.
Marxist socialism – “to each according to his need” – is a
patterned + end-result theory.
Rawls’s ‘justice as fairness’ (about which more later) is
an end-result theory + patterned
 Nozick’s entitlement theory: Whatever distribution results
from just acquisitions, transfers and rectifications need not
be patterned (i.e., correlated with anything else, e.g., moral
merit, need, usefulness to society, etc.)
Instead people are simply entitled to whatever they justly
acquire, through acquisition or transfer.
 Nozick: Any distribution is just provided it has an
appropriate history, i.e., provided that it came about in
accordance with the rules of acquisition, transfer, and/or
rectification.
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The Wilt Chamberlain Argument
 Suppose that holdings have been distributed
according your preferred pattern D1
 Suppose also that Wilt Chamberlain (19361999) is in demand as a basketball player
and people are willing to pay to see him play
 Chamberlain signs a special contract under
which he receives a 25¢ admission charge
for each home game. 1M people come to see him play,
voluntarily paying the 25¢ charge. Chamberlain ends up
with $250,000 that year, possibly more than anyone else in
your society…
 This new distribution D2, says Nozick, is just: Everyone had
control over their holdings; 1M people chose to trade some
of their holdings to watch Chamberlain play. (And who are
we to tell them what they should have spent their money
on?)
No one can claim injustice: D1 was just by hypothesis, D2
arose from D1 via only just, voluntary transfers.
 A (patterned) socialist society “would have to forbid
capitalist acts between consenting adults”
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Rights & Self-Ownership
This can be generalized: “…no end-state principle or
distributional pattern principle of justice can be continuously
realized without continuous interference in people’s lives.”
 And that is what makes all theories besides the entitlement
theory unjustifiable: Interference of this sort violates
people’s rights
The famous first line of ASU (ix): “Individuals have certain
rights, and there are things no person or group can do to
them (without violating their rights.)”
“Liberty Disrupts Patterns”
 Patterned theories are recipient-focused – they restrict an
individual’s right to transfer holdings for other persons’ benefit.
Moreover, patterned theories always eventually necessitate
re-distribution (since holdings will always deviate from the
preferred pattern over time): Liberty disrupts patterns.
“Taxation of earnings from labour is on par with forced
labour.” (242)
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Redistributive Taxation Redux
 So, can we tax Chamberlain to redistribute wealth to
others?
 Objection 1: Others need the money more than
Chamberlain.
 Response: Maybe so, and this may motivate rich people
to give to charity. But stealing from the rich to give to the
poor is still stealing (a violation of property rights)
Someone may need my kidney more than I do, but that
doesn’t obligate me to give it to her.
 Objection 2: Chamberlain consented to taxation by
choosing to remain in a redistributive society. If that
society is democratic, he also had a voice in making the
tax laws to which he is subject.
 Response: Possibly true, but irrelevant. Violating
individual rights doesn’t become acceptable simply
because a democratic majority agrees to it.
(Compare: rights to freedom of expression, freedom of
religion)
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 Objection 3: Chamberlain is simply lucky—he didn’t do
anything to deserve his natural talents or the good
fortune of being born into a society that happens to
highly value basketball.
 Response: Hmmm. But if that’s true, then
Chamberlain’s talents are not really his (or not fully his).
This is politically dangerous; it undermines the idea of
self-ownership…
Some Applications: Markets
 Assume that the self-ownership principle is true.
 Markets in Kidneys: Many jurisdictions (including
Canada and the U.S.) forbid markets in organs for
transplantation.
But if my kidneys are first and foremost my property, why
can’t I sell one if I have a willing buyer?
Or, for that matter, why can’t I sell both of them…
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 Suicide (Assisted or otherwise): If I am the owner of
myself and my body, why can’t I dispose of my property
as I see fit?
Alternatively, why can’t I hire someone to dispose it as I
wish (e.g., to bring about my death)?
For that matter, if my body and my life are my property,
why can’t I sell them to whoever I see fit…?
 Paid Sex Work: Many jurisdictions outlaw (or tightly
regulate) paid sex work; prostitution, for many people, is
stigmatized as ‘immoral’.
There may be side-constraints (as there are for other
property rights) that justify regulating paid sex work, but,
libertarians argue, self-ownership places the onus on the
would-be regulator.
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