Rawls and Nozick on Liberty & Equality

Prof. James Otteson discusses the philosophers John Rawls and Robert Nozick, and their different views on liberty and equality. Rawls considered equality to be the moral benchmark for all social and political institutions, and felt that any deviation from equality must be specially justified. Nozick, on the other hand, considered liberty to be the more important value. He pointed out that there is an inevitable tension between liberty and equality: to maintain equal distribution in society, a central planner would have to constantly interfere with people's personal choices. Alternatively, if a central planner left people free to make independent choices, any patterns of equality would ultimately be disrupted.

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[XulChris]

@TakeFiv3 How is that oversimplified? And how is it ridiculous? To me it sounds perfectly logical, simple and concise. A perfect explanation as to why socialism always fails. Do you care to elaborate? I love to see socialists squirm.

[tzasame]

@Ash243x I don't think anyone here extends individual liberty so far as to allow for the things you mention. Libertarians typically believe in virtually unlimited individual liberty SO LONG AS IT DOES NOT INTERFERE WITH THE LIBERTY OF OTHERS. The things you speak of have very little to do with the argument between liberty and equality and are typically frowned upon by both ideological extremes. Do you have an actual point to make, or are you just here to spew inflammatory rhetoric?

[52000rightwing]

Oversimplification of both arguments.

Rawls theory starts by hypothetically putting a person behind a 'veil of ignorance,' where they don't know what their social standing was, or how much wealth they had. Then asking that person to design society. The resulting design would not allow someone who had started with a position of wealth, prestige, intelligence, to live a dramatically better life than the person of lower standing.

Nozick had a great response, but I don't have the space to say why

[KrugmanTheKing]

@sellsjeeps

For instance, it's surely pretty neat when you say let's privilege freedom and let's only put concerns for negative rights and related duties. Problem is, it doesn't fulfill its purpose... if we do that, we know it will amount to an inefficient system because the conditions wherein absolute liberalization would produce optimal results cannot exist.

Of course, you can then answer but freedom is valuable and the question is, if not for the well being of humans, then for what?

[KrugmanTheKing]

@sellsjeeps

But I believe they probably had the wrong discussion altogether. The discussion they should have is about how this plays out if you let the tape run, how does ideas relate to their application and what can we allow, we can't we.

Because it surely is very nice to bring theories, but we live in a world where there are existing limits to what may happen. There wasn't this back and forth look at theory and then reality to design a sensible system and it's where they failed.

[KrugmanTheKing]

@sellsjeeps

The issue here at hand -- and I did read a bit of Nozick -- is that he considers freedom to be natural, intrinsic, whereas I hold it is a materially circumscribed and definable reality. To him, only negative rights and corresponding duties are justified, but this is a failure as mathematically and empirically demonstrable with economics. Nozick lived in a world that didn't exist at all: in an imaginary land of unrelated atoms that you may call people.

[KrugmanTheKing]

@sellsjeeps

I would respond to Nozick something he would have probably find quite intriguing: limitations can actually make freedom grow. And what I mean by this is to oppose to his view of intrinsic freedom, that of circumstantially determined and socially defined freedom: to my sense, freedom arises in degrees and is the direct output of an emancipating activity -- production, in our case. Equality then becomes a concern for freedom.

[sellsjeeps]

I'm curious as to how many people commenting on this post have actually read Rawls and Nozick. Because to someone who has I'm having a good humorous time reading these comments.

[daPlumber702]

@Ash243x The only way the rich have more power than the poor is if they are in bed with the government, and that is not true capitalism. The rich are rich because of "The poor" and if their services do not benefit "the poor" as good or better than a competitor they will no longer be rich.. When a person does violate or restrict the liberties of another person that is what the court of law is for. But you don't punish actions before they happen.

[losethegame101]

@Ash243x

Well of course people will abuse their freedoms. But then that is not an argument for restricting that freedom. If ninety-nine people are capable of basic human decency and respect, you wouldn't pass laws restricting their rights when that one lone dickhead goes and does something stupid, would you?

In the case of capitalism, if the rich are creating businesses and hiring workers then they will be expanding the resources of the poor, not limiting them.

[Ash243x]

@losethegame101

most people are capable of being decent human beings and having respect for others... where the problem lies is in giving unlimited freedom to everyone, eventually someone is going to abuse that freedom and start interfering with the freedoms of others. Especially in the case of unrestricted capitalism, the rich inherently have more advantage than the poor, so they use that advantage to suck the poor dry of resources until the poor get so fed up that they resort to violence.