“The legitimacy of altering social institutions to achieve greater equality of material condition is, though often assumed, rarely argued for. Writers note than in a given country the wealthiest n percent of the population holds more than that percentage of the wealth, and the poorest n percent hold less; that to get to the wealth of the top n percent from the poorest, one must look at the bottom p per cent (where p is greater than n) and so forth. They then proceed immediately to discuss how this might be altered. On the entitlement conception of justice in holdings, one cannot decide whether the state must do something to alter the situation merely by looking at the distributional profile or at facts such as these. It depends upon how the distribution came about.” (page 232)
– Anarchy, State, and Utopia. Robert Nozick, First published in 1974.
I wonder if any of the leaders of today’s political parties in the UK have read it, still less understood the profound way that the late Harvard professor eviscerated egalitarian “patterned” ideas of justice more incisively than arguably anyone else, before or since. Somehow, I doubt they have. In this day and age of talk about wealth taxes and other horrors, Nozick is well worth reading again.
In the socialist mind there is a finite pie and it isn’t fair if some people get more pie than other people do. It never seems to occur to them that it is even possible to bake a bigger pie. If everyone has enough pie it doesn’t matter that some people have too much.
The other thing that doesn’t seem to register is that some people work more and spend less than other people do and end up better off. In their heads it is somehow fairer if these people are robbed and the proceeds shared out. The sharing out part never actually happens anyway.
Don’t they know that the expansion of pi is infinite 😦
But I think this looks at the wrong economy. From a political perspective taking money from rich people and giving it to poor people means more poor people vote for you. It might mean less rich people vote for you, but since there are a lot more poor people than rich people then that is a net benefit. Moreover, you have the additional benefit that it means that rich people start giving you money both legitimately for your campaign, and illegitimately in other ways (including paying you massive speaking fees or giving you a job or consulting gig after you leave.) They do this to try to gain some control over this instinct to tax the rich to give to the poor.
So, what we have is an equilibrium: take money from the rich to give to the poor to get more votes, but this is constrained by the politicians being bought off by the rich to keep it from going too far. And everyone agrees to the narrative that the rich screwed the poor to get rich, giving it a patina of morality, while the rich get to hobnob with the powerful, influence policies that get them more rich, and salve their conscience by setting up charitable foundations that pay for their private jets and expensive hotel rooms while they fly to conferences to talk about wealth inequity and climate change.
Nozick is talking about what would produce the fairest, wealthiest society, but that assumes a good faith effort to do so on the part of the corrupt political set. Which does not seem to me to be a reasonable assumption.
The more astute poor people do notice that this wealth redistribution always leads to the pie getting smaller and leaving them worse off than they otherwise would have been getting a smaller slice of a much bigger pie.
BTW, regarding my previous comment, this is why I think corruption is a necessary part of democracy: how else can we balance the desire to sell votes without a bit of corruption from the rich to pull it back? And this is why the US Constitution is such a brilliant document. It gives an alternative brake on unfettered democracy besides corruption, specifically through the concepts of enumeration of government powers, fracturing of power into competitive entities (both through the three part government, the split congress, and the federal distribution of power to the states) and the hard limits on civil rights via, for example, the bill of rights. The constitution not only says “these things alone are what the government is allowed to do” and then adds another spin “oh, and BTW, just in case we weren’t clear, these are the things it isn’t allowed to do.”
America is in the mess it is today because of the gradual ablation of this armor.
Britain, on the other hand, has not had these strong safe guards. Like the British constitution it is not a single written document, but enforced by convention, tradition, culture and so forth. And it seems all these things are out the window now. As a for example, it is hard for me to believe the a thousand years of the great British tradition of freedom of speech has been utterly decimated in less than ten years.
Frazer, Nozick was writing about the lazy assumption, as he described it, that wealth inequality was wrong on its face and must be corrected. He was calling that assumption out for the baselessness of it.
As to the realities of political games, corruption and all the rest, that wasn’t the point of his passage. He’s criticising redistributionism as such, and challenging the ideology of it.
And he was mightily effective. His book was highly influential.
Sadly Robert Nozick largely withdrew from political philosophy – due to the intense pressure he was put under (which makes his words of praise for how nice his colleagues are, at the start of Anarchy, State and Utopia, rather ironic) – but he never formally recanted, which shows courage.
There is indeed nothing wrong with material inequality as-such – and when John Rawls denied that egalitarianism was based upon envy he was LYING. It was his custom to deceive – for example John Rawls was a life long socialist, yet this no where mentioned in “A Theory of Justice”, and it is relevant – as a socialist by-definition rejects the traditional definition of the word “justice” i.e. to each his own, private property rights. For a socialist to be held as an authority on “justice” is a mistake – as they reject justice in favour of “Social Justice” (the idea that the collective is the true owner of income and wealth and should “distribute” it according to some principle of “fairness”. So the very title of the main book of John Rawls “A Theory of Justice” was in-its-self a lie – the title should have been “A Theory of Social Justice” (the opposite and sworn enemy of justice).
All the above was explained at some length by the late Antony Flew – in several books, for example “Equality In Liberty and Justice”.
It should also be pointed out that a socialist can not, by definition, be an honest lawyer or honest judge – as both the Common Law and Roman Law are based on private property rights, which are precisely what socialists reject. So people such as Sir Keir Starmer (Prime Minister) and Lord Hermer (Attorney General) should have nothing to do with the law, and should indeed not be in any position of trust.
The same is true of American Progressives (whether of the historic proto Fascist type – or of the later Marxist type) – and I am not just pointing to Theodore Roosevelt’s support for lynching (for example of some Italians accused of being in the Mafia) and general contempt of the Rule of Law – but also of the formal platform of the Progressive Party in the 1912 – which states (among other abominations) that the “resources of the nation” mines, farms, ranches, and so on, belong to the nation (to the collective) rather than to mine owners, farmers, ranchers, and so on. Theodore Roosevelt was indeed a very attractive personality and had many admirable virtues, but his IDEAS (whether it be his love of war, or his religious faith in government as a God) were dreadful.
However, yes much material inequality is presently based on injustice – most notably Credit Money, but that this leads to the concentration of wealth in certain (often corrupt) hands is not a new discovery – it was pointed out by Richard Cantillon some three centuries ago, which is why it is called the “Cantillon Effect”.
Anyone who rails against material unfairness has a naive and harmful view of mankind – that we are all so noble and evolved that no one needs rewards and incentives to perform.
That isn’t us.
I should have pointed out that the Prime Minister and, I believe, Lord Hermer are NOT just members of the Labour Party – they are active members of the Fabian Society and of the Haldane Society of socialist lawyers.
That such people should not be in positions of trust, having access to confidential papers, making decisions, and so on – should be obvious. But as the British establishment is so intellectually corrupted, and has been for such a long time, it takes even fanatical totalitarians (supporters of total tyranny) such as as Mr and Mrs Webb (those drooling admirers of Stalin’s Soviet Union) to its bosom.
@bobby b
Anyone who rails against material unfairness has a naive and harmful view of mankind – that we are all so noble and evolved that no one needs rewards and incentives to perform. That isn’t us.
I mostly agree. But I think that a mistake libertarians like myself often make is our criticism of the people at the bottom who have the opportunity to succeed but don’t do it, or who live off welfare. This is a just complaint. But we seem a lot more reluctant to criticize the massive amount of welfare and corruption that make many of the rich very rich. I think we, or at least I, often want to be advocates of business as the manifestation of the free market, forgetting just how much corporatism there is in western economies.
So, sure, the complaints that the CEO of Starbucks makes 6,000 times the amount the average barista makes are entirely unjustified for the reasons you state. But I think we need to be rather more sympathetic to complaints that the CEO of a large corporation that gets rich off government corruption, preference, enforced monopolies, regulatory capture and many other things.
And of course the worst of all are politicians. Hillary Clinton an utterly failed politician is welcome to make millions off her dumb book, but the idea that she is getting a hundred grand to give some one hour motivational speech at a big corporate event is really just corporate payback, or protection money.
FWIW, this is something I noticed with Charlie Kirk toward the end of his life. He was starting to get a lot more heated about these issues. The fact that kids in their late 20s and 30s have literally not a chance in hell of buying a home, for example, or being able to marry and live off one income, is not because they are lazy or unwilling to put in the effort. The system really is stacked against them. Those homes they want to buy are ridiculously expensive largely because of massive corporate greed, welfare and corruption.
It is a mistake for us libertarians not to recognize this, and to demand that the government get out of that business and allow people the opportunity to succeed.
People seem obsessed with breaking up massive tech companies. But what about hotbeds of corruption and evil like Black Rock or State Street. If we are going to go trust busting let’s go after those bastards first.
My only quibble with what you wrote lies here.
Daughter – early 30’s – hubby, kid. Expensive DC area. just bought a rather large nice house. Hubby is doing stay-at-home daddy stuff while daughter works. Things are tight, but not as tight as I remember my life at that age with a house and three new kids.
Son – also early 30’s – wife, new baby – just bought a nice 3B house in a nice Twin Cities suburb. Mostly his income, as wife is part-time while schooling.
Eldest son – mid-30’s – LT girlfriend – both doing quite well, traveling, renting a nice big house, saving.
I honestly don’t see this era as being any more hostile to young people establishing themselves than when I was that age. I think people just expect more, and complain more.
(Get off my lawn.)
There are indeed massive distortions in Western economies caused by Credit Money – Richard Cantillon showed how this happens (three centuries ago) – that is why it is called the “Cantillon Effect”.
But higher taxes and more regulations are not going to “fix” this – they utterly miss the point, the point being the Credit Money (the money created from nothing and dished out to the connected so they can buy assets, such as land and houses, before the prices go up for everyone else).
If high taxes and lots of regulations “solved the problem” then California and New York City (which have a crushing level of taxation and endless regulations) would not be the wildly unequal places they are.
If someone complains about corruption in society, about the concentration wealth and economic power in often corrupt hands (hello BlackRock, State Street and Vanguard) ask them if they against Credit Money.
If they say something like “no – we can not go back to physical gold or silver, or any other commodity, that would be primitive” then they do not really care about corruption in the economy and society.
And, for those who really do not know, the ownership of physical money can be transferred electronically – so you do NOT have to walk around with a bag of gold in your hands.
The “practical” objections to physical commodity money are really excuses – to cover for corrupt financial interests, for example the New York Banks (and other such) that started to get privileges from the government with the Civil War era Banking Acts. Yes – way back in the 1860s.
A situation that got dramatically worse after the creation of the Federal Reserve system in 1913 – which institutionalized (and, over time, dramatically expanded) the corruption.
Capitalism should be based on real capital – Real Savings, the actual sacrifice of consumption, not Credit Money expansion – money created from nothing and dished out to the connected.
And money should be something that people choose to value, before-and-apart-from, its use as money.
Hence, for example, Article One, Section Ten, of the Constitution of the United States – what can be legal tender in any State.
And to anyone who says “oh that was never meant to stop the Federal government creating money from nothing – and dishing it out to the connected” – Not Worth A Continental to you.
My daughter and future son in law, both late twenties, are just in the process of buying their first house. They do both have pretty good jobs though, anyone earning minimum wage wouldn’t be able to I wouldn’t think. My wife and I own our house but my parents never did. I think that for my parents’ generation owning your house was less prevalent. If house ownership really peaked with my generation that would presumably make the current generation more likely to inherit a house.