Mostly summarized from Gregory Mankiw’s Principles of Economics, 5th Ed.
PART 6 The Economics of Labor Markets
Chapter 20 of 36 Income Inequality and Poverty
Section 13 of 20
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What should government do about economic inequality?
Views on this question are largely a matter of political philosophy.
Three prominent schools of thought in political philosophy are
· utilitarianism
· liberalism
· libertarianism
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Libertarianism
The two previous schools of thought, utilitarianism and liberalism, both view the total income of society as a resource to be shared.
In these views a social planner can redistribute to achieve social goals.
Libertarians argue society itself earns no income, only individual members of society do.
The government should not take from some individuals and give to others to achieve any distribution goals.
Philosopher Robert Nozick in his 1974 book “Anarchy, State, and Utopia” wrote we are not children who have been given portions of pie by someone who then makes final adjustments to remedy careless pie-cutting.
There is no central group or person entitled to control resources and deciding how resources are portioned out.
What each person gets, they get from others who give to him in exchange for something, or as a gift.
In a free society, diverse persons control diverse resources.
New wealth increases the voluntary exchanges and actions of individuals.
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Utilitarians and liberals try to judge what amount of inequality is desirable in a society.
Nozick denies the validity of this judgment.
The libertarian alternative to evaluating economic outcomes is to evaluate the process through which these outcomes arise.
When the distribution of income is achieved unfairly, e.g. when one person steals from another, the government has the right and duty to remedy the problem.
As long as the process determining distribution of income is just and fair the resulting distribution is fair, no matter how unequal.
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Nozick criticizes Rawls' liberalism by drawing an analogy between the distribution of income in society and the distribution of grades in a course.
Suppose you were asked to judge the fairness of the grades in an economics course you are taking.
Would you imagine yourself behind a veil of ignorance and choose a grade distribution without knowing the talents and efforts of each student?
Or instead, would you ensure the process of assigning grades to students is equal without regard for whether the resulting grade distribution is equal?
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Libertarians believe equality of income-earning opportunities is more important than equality of incomes.
Government should enforce individual rights to ensure everyone has maximum opportunity to achieve success.
The government has no reason or right to alter the distribution of income.
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Summary of Robert Nozick book Anarchy, State, and Utopia.
Grok:
Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974) by American political philosopher Robert Nozick is a foundational work in libertarian political philosophy.
It argues for a minimal state—limited to protecting individuals from force, theft, fraud, and enforcing contracts—while critiquing more extensive governments and theories of distributive justice, particularly John Rawls's 1971 book A Theory of Justice promoting liberalism.
Nozick posits any state beyond this "night-watchman" role violates individual rights.
The book uses thought experiments, invisible-hand explanations, and entitlement theory to defend minarchism (minimal statism) against anarchism and socialism.
It won the 1975 U.S. National Book Award and has been highly influential.
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The book is divided into three main parts, building from a defense of the minimal state to a critique of redistributive justice and a vision of utopia:
-State-of-Nature Theory and the Rise of the Minimal State:
Nozick starts with a Lockean state of nature, where individuals have natural rights but no government.
He explains how mutual-protection associations evolve into a dominant protective agency (resembling a minimal state) through market pressures and voluntary actions, without violating rights.
This includes discussions on moral constraints, compensation for risks, and why a more-than-minimal state is unjustified.
-Distributive Justice and Entitlement Theory:
Here, Nozick presents his "entitlement theory" of justice, which focuses on historical processes rather than end-state patterns.
He critiques Rawls' difference principle and other egalitarian views, using examples like the Wilt Chamberlain argument to show how free exchanges disrupt patterned distributions.
People voluntarily pay to watch Wilt Chamberlain play basketball.
Wilt becomes much richer than everyone else.
Inequality arose through free choice.
To attain equality or some perceived measure of fairness, the state would have to confiscate some of Wilt’s earnings through taxation and redistribute it.
This would violate his rights to private property.
Egalitarian redistribution requires continual coercion, including through taxation.
-Utopia and Framework:
Nozick envisions a "meta-utopia"— a framework provided by the minimal state, acting as an overarching structure that enables a diverse array of voluntary communities or "utopias."
Individuals can freely join, leave, or form these associations—ranging from capitalist to socialist experiments—based on their preferences, promoting liberty, experimentation, and mutual benefit without coercive redistribution.
This "utopia of utopias" ensures no single vision is imposed, allowing people to pursue their ideal societies under basic protections against force and fraud.
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schools of thought
shisō no ryūha
思想の流派
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