Some Arguments from Rawls and Nozick on Justice

Nozick argues that:

1. "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. (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.

2. 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). (Note: 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.)

Rawls argues that:

1. 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. (The maximin rule is appropriate when we are making a choice under the following conditions: we have little or no reliable information about the likely outcome, we don’t care much about the gains we might receive beyond the minimum we can guarantee ourselves, and some of the outcomes we can avoid are very bad indeed. Rawls argues that all these conditions are present in the original position.) If they followed the 'maximin' rule, they would choose Rawls' two principles of justice. That is they would choose principles that called for:

1. 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)

2. minimization of inequalities of wealth, power, authority, and so on, except when these inequalities are

a. open to everyone under conditions of fair equality of opportunity, and

b. 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)

2. Taxation 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') is 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 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 "happy family or social circumstances.")