Notes on Rawls and Nozick on Justice Tom Atchison
Rawls argues that:
The basic idea of the social contract tradition is a good one. This idea is that we can determine what the basic social rules ought to be by asking the following question: What rules would it be reasonable for people to accept, if they were trying to negotiate a ‘social contract’ in order to escape the ‘state of nature’ and thereby gain the benefits that flow from social cooperation? But we need to make one adjustment: the choice of basic rules will be fair only if it is made from behind "a veil of ignorance." That is, we should imagine that the people who are trying to agree on a contract (a set of rules) are ignorant of what their specific place or role in society will be. We should imagine that they don't know what race or gender or class they will belong to, what talents or disabilities they will have, or even what their personal tastes and preferences will be. If they were ignorant of all these things, then they would not be tempted to try to skew the social rules to benefit themselves, and they could agree on rules that were fair to everyone.
If people were choosing fundamental principles 'behind a veil of ignorance,' it would be rational for them to use the very conservative (risk-avoiding) 'maximin' rule of choice. This rule says that you should choose the option that has the best ‘worst case outcome’. That is, for each option on your menu, consider what is the worst possible outcome that might result if you choose that option. Then choose the option where that worst possible outcome is as good as it can be.
If they followed this rule, they would choose Rawls' two principles of justice. That is they would choose principles that called for:
Protection of civil and political liberties (because these are of fundamental importance to one's ability to pursue one's own plan of life, whatever it is).
Minimization of inequalities of wealth, power, authority, and so on, except when these inequalities are:
To everyone's benefit -- as when the possibility of earning greater rewards motivates individuals to work harder and contribute more to a socially useful enterprise (Rawls calls this “the difference principle” – presumably because it is about when differences in income, wealth, and power are justified. Note that this principle requires taxing and spending to prevent anyone from falling into poverty and to make sure that the increases in productivity, etc., really do benefit everyone.).
Open to everyone under conditions of fair equality of opportunity. (This seems to require i.). strict rules against discrimination and ii.) public provision of education and training, otherwise opportunities to ‘move up’ will not be genuinely equal.)
Taxes to support programs that expand opportunities (like public education) and provide what Rawls calls a 'social minimum' (what others sometimes call a 'social safety net') are not unfair to those who are better off, because:
Their ability to earn higher incomes is only partly a result of their own effort. It depends on the presence of a social context in which those efforts can bear fruit. (Without that social context – the institutions and practices of an ongoing society – a person’s individual effort would not generate much wealth.)
It is also largely a result of good fortune: Either inherited social advantages like wealth, connections, or access to better-than-average education or inherited natural advantages like intelligence, creativity, or athletic ability. (According to Rawls, even your ability to develop your natural talents by working hard, practicing, studying, etc. is dependent on a kind of luck. You will have acquired the character traits necessary to do these things, he says, only if you were lucky enough to be born into "fortunate family or social circumstances.")
Nozick argues that:
"Liberty upsets patterns": People who are free to bargain and trade will use that freedom in ways that, over time, will make some people better off than others, even if they start from a position of perfect equality. (The example of Wilt Chamberlain's basketball wealth is supposed to illustrate the kind of thing that would 'naturally' happen.) So any effort to maintain any particular pattern of distribution will require constant or periodic interference with people's free choices. Nozick thinks that liberty is such a fundamental right that such interference is wrong.
So, we should not expect a theory of justice to specify a pattern of distribution. Instead we should expect some account of the conditions under which people have a right to what they have (what he calls their ‘holdings’). Nozick calls his theory “the entitlement theory. It says (basically) that you are entitled to your holdings as long as you acquired them through a voluntary exchange with someone else who, in turn, acquired them justly. As long as people acquired their holdings in a fair way (roughly: without force or fraud), they are entitled to those holdings, regardless of whether others have less or have nothing. The theory does require some way to say when original acquisitions are fair, and Nozick’s answer to that question is roughly the same as Locke’s. He calls this a ‘historical’ theory because, to figure out whether people are entitled to what they have (their holdings), you have to look at the history of how they came to have them.
Taxation to benefit others is slavery: Forcibly taking a portion of a person's earnings and spending the money to provide benefits to others is tantamount to forcing that person to work without compensation (forced labor).
Nozick thinks that taxation to support what he calls a 'minimal state' is O.K. A minimal state is a government that provides nothing more than courts and law enforcement to protect citizens against violence, theft and fraud. Such a state is needed to protect our fundamental rights not to be killed, robbed, assaulted, etc. But we have no rights to be provided with food, shelter, education, or anything else besides protection.)