Explaining Libertarianism: Some Philosophical Arguments by J. C. Lester

Author:J. C. Lester [Lester, J. C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General
ISBN: 9781789559972
Google: qmOhDwAAQBAJ
Amazon: B00R1G2ONW
Goodreads: 24957675
Publisher: Legend Press Ltd
Published: 2014-11-30T09:08:14+00:00

The Main Answer to the Main Argument

Now we reach the main argument: “the rich libertarian can identify, with reasonable determinacy, an excess. He thinks Nozick provides a reasonable way of identifying this”:

lacking much historical information, and assuming (1) that victims of injustice generally do worse than they otherwise would and (2) that those from the least well-off group in society have the highest probability of being the (descendants) of victims of the most serious injustice who are owed compensation by those who benefitted from the injustices (assumed to be those better off, though sometimes the perpetrators will be others in the worst-off group), then a rough rule of rectifying the injustices might seem to be the following: organize society so as to maximize the position of whatever group ends up least well-off in the society (Nozick 1974, 231). (78)

As already explained, we could dispute this argument on the basis that the alleged discrepancy due to past injustice is nugatory. Moreover, time and again we see propertyless, non-English-speaking, immigrants arrive and achieve above-average wealth within a generation or so – despite suffering from government taxation, regulation, schooling, welfare, and even conscription. So it seems unlikely that the past is what is significantly holding back the groups of least-well-off natives (i.e., those born there). And it is also relevant that, in the given quotation, Nozick appeared to be at a theoretical loss from a libertarian viewpoint and so simply reached for Rawls’s maximin rule to patch up the problem. However, we do not need to press any of these points. For the correct response here is the same as it is to Rawls himself: if you want to “maximize the position of whatever group ends up least well-off in the society”, then that is what libertarian private-property anarchy will do. The compound growth in prosperity that the free market brings will give the least-well-off group more than they could have under any other known system.

This argument might fail to convince socialists (unless they think about it seriously, at least). But that is not really the point. The point is that Macleod 2012 offers a philosophical argument where the key assumption is really an empirical presupposition that free markets keep the poor impoverished. And yet, ceteris paribus, the world appears to have less poverty wherever, and to the extent that, it has freer markets. Consider the essay’s conclusion, that “The perhaps surprising implication of a libertarian principle of rectification of this sort is that material inequalities in our world are presumptively unjust” (78). The correct libertarian reply is that not only is there no such implication, but, on the contrary, it is only to the extent that “material inequalities” on a libertarian basis in our world are tolerated that the conditions of the “least well-off group” are maximally improved.

Even if this response’s historical and pro-market interpretations are substantially mistaken, it is still an absurd overestimate to suggest that “a reasonable approximation of the rich libertarian’s excess, is the amount of resources he has above what he would have if resources were equally distributed”.

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