John Rawls vs. Robert Nozick
John Rawls and Robert Nozick may have been colleagues, but they had very, very different ideas about society, justice and the state. Were Rawls and Nozick running for public office and they were my only two options (why is it we always seem to be pressed to decide between the lesser of two evils?) I would have to vote for Rawls, not because I agree with him more, but because I agree with Nozick less. First I will explain why I disagree with Nozick and then I will proceed to explain why I prefer Rawls.
In a modern day situation, it could be said that progressive Democrats who believe that the state exists for the every one’s benefit would be more likely to identify with Rawls and tea partying Republicans who believe that nearly every action of the state is an infringement on their rights would be more likely to identify with Nozick.
Nozick would not receive my vote because I do not support his idea of, essentially, privatizing many functions of the government. I believe that there are certain functions and services that the state should handle and the private sector should not. The state, according to Nozick, serves no function beyond that of protecting rights and the short-term rectification of past injustices.
I also don’t agree with Nozick on the issue of mandates and taxation. Nozick advocates a system in which services that we are generally accustomed to being provided for by the state through taxes are handled by private agencies. There is a recent real world example that illustrates just why I disagree with this system.
On September 29th 2010 in Obion County Tennessee, firefighters watched as a man’s house burned to the ground because he hadn’t opted in to the county’s privatized system of fire insurance. The homeowner, Gene Cranick, offered to pay the fire department whatever sum it would take for the firefighters to put out the flames, but he was told that it was too late. The fire department would do nothing to stop his house from burning. Only when a neighbor’s house caught on fire, a neighbor who had opted in to the fire protection service, did the firefighters respond. The firefighters put out the neighbor’s home, but left Cranick’s home to burn to the ground. Neighbors and other county residents were furious, not with the firefighters themselves, but with the people who put the policy in place.
The system used in Obion County is similar to what Nozick called a mutual-protection association, or an MPA. A person may pay an agency for a particular service or may forgo the charge and go without the service. Nozick describes how an MPA may come about, “In a state of nature an individual may himself enforce his rights, defend himself, exact compensation, and punish (or at least try his best to do so). Others may join with him in his defense, at his call. They may join with him to repulse an attacker or to go after an aggressor because they are public spirited, or because they are his friends, or because he has helped them in the past, or because they wish him to help them in the future, or en exchange for something” (Nozick, p. 12). An MPA is an organization that is not run by the state and exists for the benefit of its members.
Nozick also points out the inconveniences that accompany belonging to an MPA. “Two inconveniences attend such simple mutual-protection associations: (I) everyone is always on call to serve a protective function (and how shall it be decided who shall answer the call for those protective functions that do not require the services of all members?); and (2) any member may call out his associates rights are being, or have been, violated” (Nozick, p. 12). Members of an MPA may also end up being at the beck and call of its more paranoid members and may also be subjected to arbitrary rules.
Now back to the house fire example: Selling fire insurance after the fire is bad business and it’s the reason that firefighting is generally not sold as a private good. (No one expects their house to catch on fire, after all.) Firefighting is run as a collective good, a notion Nozick flatly dismissed. “But there is no social entity with a good that undergoes some sacrifice for its own good. There are only individual people, different individual people, with their own individual lives (Nozick, p.33),” he wrote.
I think that the example of fire insurance can be used for health care as well and also demonstrate why I disagree with Nozick. The health care reform package recently passed by Congress includes an individual mandate that adults must purchase health insurance if it is not provided for by their employer. If a person does not purchase health insurance, as mandated, they will be fined by the government.
Members of the tea party, who seem to align themselves with Nozickian principles, have railed against this provision of the law, claiming it is a violation of their rights and that the state is overstepping its bounds. Repealing health care reform is a major platform of the tea partiers and appears to be rooted in Nozickian-style libertarian thinking.
When advocates of health care reform, who would potentially support a system of welfare-liberalism as advocated by Rawls, explain why an individual mandate is necessary, they put it in terms of firefighting: Everyone needs to buy health insurance for the same reason everyone needs to buy fire protection. If the market is left unregulated, some people will not buy fire protection. Since we’re not comfortable with the idea of letting some one’s house burn down, fire protection is provided as a public service. The same thing goes for health care: If the market is left unregulated, some people will not buy insurance and others will not be able to afford it, and when they get sick, insurers will not sell it to them. We’re also not comfortable with the thought of people dying in the streets for lack of health care coverage, hence the individual mandate.
An MPA-style system of fire protection was utilized in Tennessee and when American citizens were confronted with the realities of what happens when a person does not opt in to the system, we were, for the most part, horrified with the outcome. We are uncomfortable with the idea of letting a person’s house burn down, and we are also uncomfortable with the idea of people getting sick and dying because of their financial situation, therefore we rely on the state for certain services.
The MPA could however be conflated with a state, but Nozick is quick to point out their differences. “There are at least two ways in which the scheme of private protective associations might be thought to differ from a minimal state, might fail to satisfy a minimal conception of a state: (I) it appears to allow some people to enforce their own rights, and (2) it appears not to protect all individuals within its domain” (Nozick, p.22). MPAs also fall short of being a full state because they are not the monopoly of force. “Thus it appears,” Nozick wrote, “that the dominant protective agency in a territory not only lacks the requisite monopoly over the use of force, but also fails to provide protection for all in its territory; and so the dominant agency appears to fall short of being a state” (Nozick, p.25).
I have already mentioned that Nozick does not believe in public goods and the same thing goes for public property. To Nozick, all property is private property. But I think that without the state, there would be no private property and the free market system would be in shambles. The New Deal is an example of this. A capitalist system probably would more than likely not be able to sustain itself after 25% unemployment and the reforms implemented by the state in the 1930s helped preserve private property and the free market.
I feel like Nozick’s libertarian paradise is an unachievable dream and that the libertarian style of thinking is thoroughly out of touch with reality. Nozick’s approach is a worldview that only works as long as nobody actually tries it.
While Nozick argued that there is no such thing as the “public,” Rawls argued in favor of the “public good.” He wrote, “[A] society is well ordered when it is not only designed to advance the good of its members but when it is also effectively regulated by a public conception of justice” (Rawls, p.3).
I agree with Rawls more than I do Nozick because Rawls believes that the state can serve a variety of useful purposes. To Rawls, justice is the primary function of the state and he even opens his book by writing “Justice is the first virtue of social institutions” (Rawls, p.3). Rawls continues on, writing, “For us the primary subject of justice is the basic structure of society, or more exactly, the way in which the major social institutions distribute fundamental rights and duties and determine the division of advantages from social cooperation…Taken together as one scheme, the major institutions define men’s rights and duties and influence their life prospects, what they can expect to be and how well they hope to do” (Rawls, p.7).
Rawls sets out two principles of justice that I agree with and believe would be generally accepted. “First: each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive basic liberty compatible with a similar liberty for others. Second: social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both (a) reasonably expected to be to everyone’s advantage, and (b) attached to positions and offices open to all” (Rawls, p.60).
I believe that the system currently in place in the United States is much more in line with Rawls’ thinking than Nozick’s. Rawls takes care to point out that everyone is born with certain natural advantages and talents and that the existence of these attributes is neither unjust nor just, but the existence of a state that takes advantage of these characteristics would be. “The natural distribution is neither just nor unjust; nor is it unjust that persons are born into society at some particular position. These are simply natural facts…Aristocratic and caste societies are unjust because they make these contingencies the ascriptive basis for belonging to more or less enclosed and privileged social classes” (Rawls, p. 102).
Rawls points out that society “is a cooperative venture for mutual advantage” (Rawls, p.126), but that doesn’t mean we are not without individual interests. Continuing on, he wrote, “There is an identity of interests since social cooperation makes possible a better life for all than any would have if each were to try to live solely by his own efforts. There is a conflict of interests since men are not indifferent as to how the greater benefits produced b y their collaboration are distributed, for in order to pursue their ends they each prefer a larger to a lesser share” (Rawls, p.126).
Because everyone prefers a “larger to a lesser share” and because everyone has different talents and abilities, I believe that Rawls’ principles of justice, that are, essentially a fairness of opportunity and an equality of rights, best serve all of society. I believe this is the society that most Americans would prefer; one in where opportunity goes beyond legal access and allows for the improvement of social and economic position.
Libertarians like Nozick rail against the state arguing that it is working against us—that it is too paternalistic, but I disagree. Parents do not let their teenagers have the car out all night because they know it is unwise. The same goes for the state. At times, though it may seem annoying, the state does have its citizens’ best interests in mind. Rawls wrote, “It is also rational for them to protect themselves against their own irrational inclinations by consenting to a scheme of penalties that may give them a sufficient motive to avoid foolish actions and by accepting certain impositions designed to undo the unfortunate consequences of the imprudent behavior...Thus the principles of paternalism are those that the parties would acknowledge in the original position to protect themselves against the weakness and infirmities of their reason and will in society. Other are authorized and sometimes required to act on our behalf and to do what we would for ourselves if we were rational, this authorization coming into effect only when we cannot look after our own good” (Rawls, p. 249).
In sum I would vote for Rawls because I take greater umbrage with Nozick’s libertarian stances than I do with Rawls’ liberalism. I do not think that Nozick’s system could exist beyond the realm of theory and I believe that we already have a system in place that is consistent with Rawls’ principles and are still working to create a more just and fairer system.
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