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From: carnes@gargoyle.UChicago.UUCP (Richard Carnes)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Libertarianism & basketball
Message-ID: <272@gargoyle.UChicago.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 3-Jan-85 23:17:23 EST
Article-I.D.: gargoyle.272
Posted: Thu Jan  3 23:17:23 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 4-Jan-85 05:36:29 EST
Organization: U. Chicago - Computer Science
Lines: 57

Laura Creighton has related Robert Nozick's fable about Wilt Chamberlain.
It is interesting and worth a closer look.

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]  

[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?]

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.  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?  

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.  

I will have more to say on Nozick's entitlement theory of justice; let this
suffice for now.

Richard Carnes, ihnp4!gargoyle!carnes