Nozick on Wilt Chamberlain, and if rectification is enough - Kat Lanzalotto
I want to think through Nozick's argument on how liberty upsets patterns and its greater implications. To start, Nozick distinguishes between patterned and unpatterned principles. Patterned principles, which distribute goods based on some natural dimensions, differ from unpatterned approaches, Nozick's preference, which distributes goods without a pattern.
Nozick argues how liberty upsets patterns to assert that patterned approaches to distribution are unjust. Nozick presents his infamous Wilt Chamberlain analogy to rule out ALL patterned principles. First, we start in D1, any patterned distribution of our choosing (from each according to their height, wealth, intelligence, etc) – any distribution we find just. Then, Nozick introduces Wilt Chamberlain, a great basketball star who many people want to watch play. Wilt Chamberlain then signed a new contract stipulating that he would make 25 cents off each purchased ticket to see his team. So, all attendees buy their tickets and set aside 25 cents for Chamberlain in a special box. But now, Nozick argues, we are no longer in the just D1 distribution pattern, so we move to D2. In D2, Chamberlain has much more wealth than everyone else does, with the extra 25-cent ticket money.
But is D2 unjust? Here Nozick expects people to find the new distribution pattern unjust and seek to redistribute Chamberlain's amassed wealth because of the inequality under D2 (which evaded the just D1 distribution pattern). Nozick, however, argues that there cannot be injustice in D2. Since D1 is just (because you chose it as a just distribution pattern), and the only difference between D1 and D2 is consensual exchanges of money for a service (a voluntary exchange of 25 cents to watch Chamberlain play), how can D2 be unjust? To maintain any pattern, Nozick contends that you would have to forbid capitalist acts between consenting adults), which upsets fundamentally liberty. Nozick writes, "No end-state principle of distributional patterned principle of justice can be continuously realized without continuous interference with people's lives. Any favored pattern would be transformed into one unfavored by the principle, by people choosing to act in various ways; for example, by people exchanging goods and services with other people to giving things to other people, things to transformers are entitled to under the favored distributional pattern, To maintain a pattern one must either continually interfere to stop people from transferring resources as they wish to, or continually (or periodically) interfere to take from some persons resources that others for some reason chose to transfer to them(163)." As such, Nozick's principle of distribution is unpatterned and historical
But, I do now know if the basis of Nozick's argument against distribution is sufficient. If you look at the initial tenet of Nozick's assertion, he assumes, potentially incorrectly, that the D1 distribution is just. Looking through history, however, it is highly likely that injustice occurred along the way. Nozick makes clear that just property holding emerges through just acquisition (how someone initially came to own a thing) and just transfer (how to acquire a good which is already owned justly). Overall, Nozick uses a similar approach to Locke, allowing original acquisition by combining labor with unowned resources. But in all likelihood, the initial D 1 distribution is likely unjust! Considering the reality of our world, I find it hard to imagine that Chamberlain's traits (his massive height, etc) were not in some way impacted by injustices throughout human history. Maybe one family stole food from another, which made Chamberlain taller and more likely to succeed.
While Nozick does present a third principle of justice, the rectification of injustices, a process that I find sufficient, it only suffices in theory. Let's consider the true rectification of injustices necessary to repair past actions, namely American slavery. Mass sums of money are necessary to cover the initial cost of the unjustly held thing and the resulting advantage the unjust property holder received. 2020 estimates show that the US would need to spend 10-12 trillion dollars to cover reparations over slavery – and this estimate might not even be sufficient. A few years ago Brookings estimated that "In 1860, over $3 billion was the value assigned to the physical bodies of enslaved Black Americans to be used for free labor and production. This was more money than was invested in factories and railroads combined. In 1861, the value placed on cotton produced by enslaved Blacks was $250 million." While Nozick's rectification of injustices seems sufficient to supplement his argument against patterned principles of distribution, considering the reality in which we live, even the most liberal rectification of injustices cannot, and may not be enough to wholly make up for the misappropriation of people and property throughout history.
Link to the Brooking article: https://www.brookings.edu/policy2020/bigideas/why-we-need-reparations-for-black-americans/
I was intrigued by the dichotomy between patterned and entitlement (liberty) principles that you work through here, as I found Nozick's claim that liberty was in total opposition to patterns somewhat difficult to accept. Your discussion of the Chamberlain example got me thinking about this. It seemed to me at first that Nozick defines patterns so broadly that he is unable to escape advocating for one himself. He claims that the act of paying the basketball star disrupts D1, which then requires an infringement on liberty/entitlement to re-establish, assuming D1 as the goal. This example is not, however, sufficient to distinguish his entitlement theory to a utilitarian pattern theory. In his discussion of Hayek, just a few pages before, he allows for a "patterned strand of a free capitalist society," (158). He even manages to fit his entitlements theory into an "from each/to each" statement, which he says is a feature of patterned distributional theories.
ReplyDeleteThis threw me for a loop until I re-read the footnote on page 157, where he concedes that while overall distribution based on entitlements could be conceived of as a pattern, the right to a particular, individual object cannot. Under a pattern, the object could rightfully be exchanged for an identical one that someone else is ‘entitled’ to, but not under entitlement theory.
Although I understand his claim, this seems like a pretty useless distinction. Why should anyone care about having a possession switched out for an identical one? If this technicality is the only thing that keeps Nozick’s theory from essentially being a complicated form of a historical pattern principle, it’s hard to see how they’re really any different at all. The importance of the third principle of entitlement, which you rightly highlight as essential to making the Chamberlain example work, therefore emerges from the need to meet a PATTERN OF DISTRIBUTION BASED ON HISTORICAL ENTITLEMENT, not from the sanctity of entitlement OUTSIDE the realm of patterned principle (sorry for the all caps I can't do italics in here). With entitlements and liberty understood thusly, Nozick no longer seems so different from the utilitarians as he would like to think.
Hi Kat! What I really liked about your comment is how you pointed out that individual characteristics, such height, might themselves be assets that were historically "distributed" unfairly. If we consider our bodies to be our own property, then the characteristics that come with that body seem to also be property themselves. Nozick frames the entitlement conception as "From each as they choose, to each as they are chosen" (160). So, theoretically, our parents could pass down good health, high intelligence, etc., if we were their chosen recipients. Similarly, they could nurture us with nutritious food, good healthcare, and good educations. Nozick would consider this just according to the entitlement theory, as our parents had a right to give us these privileges even if we did nothing to "deserve" them. But, as you pointed out Kat, what if our parents acquired those traits unfairly? Furthermore, what if our parents acquired the means to nurture us (like money) through historically unjust means? For example, think about Europeans coming to the United States and stealing Native American land. That property was not justly acquired, but generated immense amounts of wealth for white people, which was passed down through generations and created the basis for even greater sums of wealth. At the same time, this unjust acquisition of land impoverished many Native American tribes. Even if we could compensate Native American tribes for all the land and money that was stolen from them, I would argue that we cannot actually rectify the injustices in acquisition that have occurred. This is because personal characteristics, and our caretakers' ability to nurture those characteristics, were being passed down along with the money itself. The childhood nurturing that can so profoundly affect an individual's future success (being fed properly or being read to as a child) can not be compensated for. And that individual's success likely effects the future nurturing of their children, and their children's children, and so on. Thus, I would agree with your assertion that our traits are impacted by historical injustices, and that no amount of money seems sufficient to rectify them.
ReplyDeleteBy that logic, I wonder if we can ever live in a world that conforms to Nozick's understanding of the entitlement theory. Nozik claims that "Things come into the world already attached to people having entitlements over them" (160). But does this assertion apply to individual traits as well? Are people entitled to their intelligence if they built that intelligence through an expensive education, which was funded by unjustly accumulated wealth? If the answer is no, it seems hard to claim that people are entitled to any similar traits. Subsequently, they cannot justly pass those traits, or nurturing required to build those traits, down to their children. Thus, when we consider the issue of trait inheritance, it seems that the condition of just acquisition required for Nozick's theory of entitlement is unfeasible.