Difference between revisions of "The Entitlement Theory of Justice"

Nozick does consider a few examples of violations of his idea due to the Lockean proviso.  [178]  But these all consider only justice in terms of baseline conditions in cases of extreme monopoly examples such as water holes in the desert.  He does briefly touch on the possibility of monopoly being arrived at by just transactions.  To salvage his theory, he invents the "historical shadow of the Lockean proviso on appropriation." [180]  This attributes all the fault to the initial acquisition being imperfectly just, and protects his notion of justice maintenance.  Then he says "I believe that the free operation of a market system will not actually run afoul of the Lockean proviso."  [182]  So any problems would come from faulty initial acquisition, and mightn't happen anyway.  Ah, the airtight logic of the ivory tower!

 

Just as Nozick fails to give an account of justice in acquisition, Nozick does not make any demonstration that justice in transfer works.   

You pay busfare and board a bus.  You sit in the last seat, which is marked "Give up this seat to the elderly."  At the next stop, an elderly person pays busfare and boards the bus.  The elderly person wants the seat he is entitled to, but cannot take it because you occupy it.

So what?  Well, justice is not maintained: you need to get up and allow the elderly person to take the reserved seat.

Mathematical induction has two steps: a base step that shows an initial condition to be true, and an inductive step that shows that the next condition from a true condition will also be true.  Nozick's base step is justice in acquisition, and his inductive step is justice in transfer. Perfection of the original situation and the steps is required.  Just initial situations are required (an impracticality.)  And a demonstration of perfect justice-maintainance of the steps is required: a step may be just without maintaining justice. (This is a big problem: he's making an inductive argument without showing the critical step.)  But worse, in real life we can't ever have perfect justice of steps or starting situations.  So the question is whether the steps move us closer or further from justice, and where an equilibrium will be reached (if one exists.)  The Nozick statement has an implied binary logic model which real life doesn't match.  Nozick provides neither, and thus gives us only an illusion of a valid argument.  So why is he using the form of mathematical induction?

Nozick simulates mathematical induction (and uses the word induction), without meeting the requirements.  His real trick is concealing an assumption: if something is just at time A, then it is just for all time.  The Lockean proviso means that if you re-evaluated justice in acquisition at a later time, something that is just now may not be just later.  I could justify acquisition a piece of land now when there is enough and as good left, but not rejustify acquiring the same land later when there is not enough and as good left.  He needs that trick in order to simulate mathematical induction.  In computing, we talk about when evaluation occurs in getting a result, because you will get different results with different times and orders of evaluation.  Nozick wants to stack the results in his favor by silently assuming one evaluation in the past applies to all future times.

Ironically, Nozick's claim that "liberty destroys patterns" applies to his own theory of maintaining a pattern of justice.  That's what the bus example shows

 

Likewise, this failure of induction shows that scarcity of land causes the exact same failure to maintain justice according to the Lockean Proviso.  As soon as there isn't "enough and as good" land (Locke's standard), the previously just situation requires a different explanation of why it may not be unjust now.  Nozick does not address this.  We can easily tell when "enough and as good" occurs: price for the value of land alone arises, because prices are symptoms of scarcity.

The principle of rectification is a "continuous inerference in people's lives" to compensate for unjust initial acquisition and unjust transfer and externalities.  A glib way to sweep all the problems under the rug without having to measure their magnitude or ubiquity.  But Nozick fails to consider injustice that can arise from correct application of his two steps, as shown in the bus example above.  He only treats violations of those two steps. (152-153)  This third case is enormous: all land ownership violates the Lockean Proviso because there is not enough and as good.  It also makes the need for rectification much greater than Nozick recognizes.

 

In the bus example above, the rectification would be to yield your seat to the elderly person.  For property, we already have some (insufficient) principles of rectification: they are called land taxes.

Nozick's entitlement theory only presumes that there are no externalities from the two steps,

ie. there are no side effects that involuntarily affect other people.  Any acquisitions or transfers or use that cause prices to arise or change involuntarily affect other people, and thus may be unjust.  Use of property can create injustice.  Levee building, conspicuous protective

because somebody else owns that land.  While I can walk down a city street, I cannot make use of the vast wealth surrounding me unless I bribe the owners with an adequate payment.  Denying this is a pattern maintained at a cost of huge expense and interference is ridiculous.