Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!laura From: laura@utzoo.UUCP (Laura Creighton) Newsgroups: net.politics Subject: Re: Libertarianism & basketball Message-ID: <4897@utzoo.UUCP> Date: Thu, 10-Jan-85 02:20:39 EST Article-I.D.: utzoo.4897 Posted: Thu Jan 10 02:20:39 1985 Date-Received: Thu, 10-Jan-85 02:20:39 EST References: <272@gargoyle.UChicago.UUCP> Organization: U of Toronto Zoology Lines: 162 Reply to Richard Carnes: First, let me tell a slightly different fable. A sports trainer spots a youth from a very poor family who has great talent for basketball. The trainer offers the youth a decent subsistence in return for selling himself into slavery for life. The youth agrees, considering this to be his best chance in life, and thenceforth the trainer makes $240,000 a year from his slave. There is nothing in Nozick, so far as I am aware, which implies that there is anything wrong with this arrangement. Here is what Nozick says about enslavement contracts: "The comparable question about an individual is whether a free system will allow him to sell himself into slavery. I believe that it would." [AS&U, p. 331] This may be Nozick's view, but it is definitely not every libertarian view. There are several common libertarian attacks on Nozick's view about selling into slavery -- the first is that it can never be in anyone's best interest to sell himself into slavery and therefore any slave owner who has presented this claim as fact is guilty of fraud. A second is that all contracts should be breakable. (This is Murray Rothbard's argument.) There may be great penalties involved in breaking a contract, but they still must be breakable. Actually, Nozick goes wishy-washy on this particular issue: if a good is essential for the survival of someone, then noone (according to Nozick) can claim it as property. [I think that this is a flaw in his entitlements theory, though not the most serious one.] Is freedom essential for survival as a human being? This would make an interesting court case! The other flaw is that Nozick believes that it is possible to compensate people for coercion applied to them. Therfore, if the poor man could claim that coercion was used in getting him to sell himself into slavery, then he could demand that he be recompensated for the damage done to him. The tricky question is ``who decides what is just compensation''? Nozick isn't all that clear about this... [Let me throw in another libertarian fable here, although it is not directly relevant: The Mayflower lands, and most of the Pilgrims remain on board to settle on a political constitution. One Pilgrim, however, sneaks ashore and claims Massachusetts. According to libertarian principles, the other Pilgrims will have to rent or buy land from the one who owns Massachusetts, or else move on to New Hampshire. Anything wrong with this scenario, libertarians?] Yep. Nozick uses the Lockean ``mixing your labour with land'' to designate what is property. Putting up a fence isn't good enough. So, the One Pilgrim can get all the land he can reasonably use [Nozick is vague on what is reasonable] but that sure isn't going to be all of Massachusettes. Of course, the real thing that is wrong with this scenario is that the Indians were there first, and you aren't considering *their* property rights.... Now let me retell Nozick's fable, making a small change which will not affect Nozick's argument. We start with one's favored distribution of wealth, D, having been actually realized in the society. Now consider a young lady, Brooke, whose chief achievement in life thus far is to be beautiful (this she has accomplished by a clever choice of genes). A million people a year pay her 25 cents each to see her face in magazines, so she makes $250,000 a year. Another young lady, Carol, studies modern dance and works at it six hours a day (while holding a job to support herself). Eventually she turns professional and makes $6,000 a year as a dancer. There is now a new distribution of wealth, E. Nozick asks, Is not this new distribution just? Each person who paid to see Brooke or Carol parted with his money voluntarily. If the people were entitled to dispose of the resources to which they were entitled under D, didn't this include their being entitled to give it to Brooke rather than to Carol? Can anyone complain on grounds of justice? Well, yes, I think Carol can, who is not only talented but works far harder than Brooke, whose hardest work is applying her makeup. Nozick is asking us to believe that distributive justice has nothing to do with what individuals DESERVE. Whoops! In using the word DESERVE you are making a huge judgement here. You assume that there is some way to measure what people deserve, which is distinct from ``what people are willing to pay for''. You seem to be connecting this to ``working hard''. The problem is that it is difficult to determine who is actually ``working harder''. Do ditch diggers work harder than physics professors? Now, ideally, the people you think deserve the most amount of money should get paid the most amount of money, right? Therefore, at D time Brooke could expect to get less money (in salary) than Carol. However, in handing over their money to Brooke rather than to Carol, thouse thousands of people are saying that they value what Brooke is doing more than what Carol is doing. Hmm. I think that this sucks. However, given that I want to change this, what I really want to change is the fact that people value the appearance of people so much. (if my only problem was that Carol didn't have enough money then I could either give her some of mine, or try to convince Brooke to give her some of hers.) I would rather that people sent their 25 cents to a charitable foundation for the arts then gave it to Brooke. [By the way, I have precisely the same problem with Wilt Chamberlein. I wish people didn't value sports, either.] Consciousness raising is tough work. I don't expect it to be easy, and I don't expect it to change much in my lifetime. However, taking money away from Brooke to give to Carol does nothing to fix the basic problem *that human beings are making bad choices when they pay so much money to watch Brooke*. It also doesn't change the fact that this is *my opinion* and, obviously, other people think that paying money to see either Wilt Chamberlein or Brooke is a good decision. I have the right to do my utmost to convince people that they are mistaken in this belief -- I do *not* have the right to coerce people into acting as I would have them act. Individuals need not make money the old-fashioned way in Nozick's society, EARNING it by merit, in order for the outcome to be just. It is sufficient that the transfers have not involved coercion or fraud. Is this the position of (all, most, some) libertarians, or am I misstating it in some way? You are mistating it. The problem that you have is that you are making a distinction between ``what a person earns by merit'' and ``what other people are willing to pay for it''. I think that this distinction is artificial. What you have is your own standard (what I would be willing to pay for it) and the unhappy knowledge that other people's standards are not your own. However, collectively, the decisions of these individuals fix the price on any good or service provided and this is a measure of what it is *worth*. If your complaint is that libertarians do not guarantee that people would be as enlightened as to pick your particular standard of values, well, yes, then this is so. However, how am I supposed to know that your values are superior to mine? By letting you convince me? This is entirely consistent with libertarianism. If the truth that Carol deserves more than Brooke is that obvious then after you have managed to enlighten a sufficiently large number of people then this adjustment will just happen (as people who now have chosen to adopt your values pay to see Carol whereas before they would have paid to see Brooke). If this truth is not so obvious, then what do you have which distinguishes you from any other person whose beliefs I disagree with? At any rate, it is evident why Nozick is concerned to demonstrate that market outcomes are just: Nozick's minimal state is not allowed to "correct" market outcomes by redistribution of wealth, even though, as Hayek admits, market outcomes depend to a great extent on luck. We thus see, not for the last time, how the defense of the minimal state is linked to the defense of capitalism. Actually, Nozick's entitlement theory has a great deal to say about redistribution of wealth, which Nozick thinks is sometimes justified. However, I think he is being inconsistent here. Laura Creighton utzoo!laura