How Patterns Preserve Liberty

A reply to Nozick -- he wants to vindicate socialism.

 
 Even if Nozick is wrong that socialism is not just, his stronger claim is that it is incompatible with liberty.
 Nozick says that any distribution arising from a series of just transactions and starting from a just
distribution is just.
 But "it is important" that the transactions are "not only voluntary but sensible" -- e.g., it is unjust if people
like Wilt Chamberlain irrationally.
 The outcome is just only if the agents would have agreed to it knowing what the outcome would be -- so he
wants to outlaw risk???
 It is legitimate to want a world in which people are free to pay money to watch Wilt play and and Wilt not
have so much more money than everyone else, and it is foolish to claim that Wilt would not play basketball
in such a world.
 It's bad if some people are much richer than others because then they have an excess of power [note: he just
claims this, doesn't back it up]
 
  

G. A. Cohen:  “Robert Nozick and Wilt

Chamberlain:  How Patterns Preserve Liberty”
 
 “In ‘Robert Nozick and Wilt Chamberlain:  How Patterns Preserve Liberty,’ Cohen answers the major
objection of Nozick and other libertarians to socialism.  As illustrated by Nozick’s famous Wilt Chamberlain
parable, libertarians argue that socialist (or any patterned) principle of justice must be rejected as
incompatible with liberty.  Cohen challenges Nozick’s conception of justice, arguing that he has yet to prove
his case against socialism.  Further, Cohen denies that socialism is infeasible or that it would involve, as
libertarians claim, an unacceptable interference with liberty.  Socialists restrict (economic) liberties in order
to expand our freedom generally.  Libertarians cannot complain about this since capitalism itself erodes the
liberty of a large class of people.”
 
 
“The capitalism Nozick advocates is more pure than the one we know today.  It lacks taxation for social
welfare, and it permits degrees of inequality far greater than most apologists for contemporary bourgeois
society would now countenance.” 
On the Wilt Chamberlain Example
 
He starts with a discussion of Nozick’s famous Wilt Chamberlain example, which is meant to prove that
“patterned” principles of distributive justice (ones that specify a certain pattern – like equality – that society
should follow) are upset by liberty, or by people exercising their liberty:
 
(1)  Imagine  a society set up to fit some pattern we “treasure” (like egalitarianism).
 
(2)  Wilt Chamberlain says he’ll only play if everyone puts .25 in a special box for him in addition to
buying their regular ticket.
 
(3)  People are fine with this because .25 isn’t much and they really want to see him play.
 
(4)  Everyone was entitled to the .25 they gave up and transferred it justly.
 
(5)  A million people attend the game and WC now has $250,000 (tons of money in 1974).
 
(6)  The society is no longer egalitarian.
 
(7)  No injustice has been done.
 
(8)  Freedom upsets patterned principles of distributive justice in a way that is not unjust.
 
(9)  Patterned principles of justice are thus incompatible with freedom and, since freedom is an absolute
side constraint on actions in a just society, incompatible with justice.
 
 
It is important to remember that “According to Nozick
 
(1)  Whatever arises from a just situation by just steps is itself just.
 
Steps are just if they are free of injustice, and they are free of injustice if they are fully voluntary on the part of
all legitimately concerned persons.  Hence
 
(2)  Whatever arises from a just situation as a result of fully voluntary transactions on the part of all
legitimately concerned persons is itself just.”
 
The result of the WC game us thus fully just.
 
 
It’s important to Nozick that these transactions are done for a good reason and aren’t arbitrary.  Cohen tries
to show that the Chamberlain example does not take into account that those making the transaction may not
be fully reasoning through all the consequences of their actions.  We may have reasons for limiting how
wealthy someone can become, one such reason, according to Cohen, “is to prevent him from acquiring,
through his holdings, an unacceptable amount of power over others... The Chamberlain transaction…
threatens to generate a situation in which some have unacceptable amounts power over others...  The case
before us is a society of equality in danger of corruption.”
 
 
Since a lack of concern for this problem, in a society that supposedly prizes equality, is irrational, then it
doesn’t meet Nozick’s test that such transactions must be done “for a reason” if they are to not be
“disturbing”.  Cohen verges on paternalism here, in arguing that if people can’t foresee the negative
consequences of their actions, then perhaps they should not be entirely free to make any transaction they
choose.  (This could be like the argument against gambling perhaps.)
 
 
Another argument against such transactions—ones that would result in divided societies—is that third
parties, including the unborn, have an interest in such a situation not arising, an interest that is not taken into
account.