Sunteți pe pagina 1din 9

Julian Johannes Immanuel Koch Bayreuth, den 25.06.

10

Value added economics

____________________

Nozick’s normative inflation of economic automatisms


and equations in his principle of self-ownership

Matrikelnummer: 1177482
E-Mail: Julian-koch@arcor.de

1
Julian Johannes Immanuel Koch Bayreuth, den 25.06.10

This essay takes Robert Nozick as a representative of modern moral


philosophy concerning itself with the question of whether an institution is
just or not. I focus especially on the principle of self-ownership and refute it
as being absurd. Having undermined the main opposition, I plead for an
institution’s right for redistribution of goods.

2
Julian Johannes Immanuel Koch Bayreuth, den 25.06.10

Value added economics


Nozick’s normative inflation of economic automatisms and equations in his principle of self-
ownership
____________________

Table of Contents

Preamble………………………………………………………………………………page 4

Main Section………………………………………………………………………….page 5

Premise ............................................................................................................................page 5

The self-ownership principle ............................................................................................page 5

Autonomy .........................................................................................................................page 6

Recourse to self-ownership ..............................................................................................page 6

Effort and self-ownership in praxis ...................................................................................page 7

Redistribution as a means for equality and opportunity ..................................................page 7

Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………….page 8

Sources………………………………………………………………………………...page 9

3
Julian Johannes Immanuel Koch Bayreuth, den 25.06.10

Value added economics


Nozick’s normative inflation of economic automatisms and equations in his principle of self-
ownership
____________________

Preamble

The traditional belief of philosophy and economics as separate disciplines is waning in the face of
ever more complicated implications – through the opening of markets, but also the economization
on a grander scale – of economic actions that cannot disburden themselves of raising moral concerns
and responsibilities. Traditional schemes of morality concerned with the individual seem unfit to
keep up with the scale of economic impact. Thus, to be able to tackle the problems pragmatically,
ethicists, like economists, started scrutinizing whole institutions.

An institution is a specialized system authorized and assigned by its constituents to fulfill a function
more effectively than if each constituent had taken action on his own behalf. For moral philosophers
the purpose of an institution is to create and preserve a just distribution and/or redistribution of
material means and immaterial goods. Using the same theoretical concept of `institution’, the
philosopher and the economist differ only in what values they attribute to the institution. An
institution might be, morally speaking, just, but economically speaking not the most effective
institution.

In this essay I will examine the position of Robert Nozick, particularly concerning his principle of self-
ownership, as a representative of modern moral philosophy, who in method and evaluation
combines economics and philosophy in examining institutional systems and determining whether
they are just or not. I will start by explaining Nozick’s differentiation between types of distribution, to
then scrutinize the very core of his argument, which requires a just distributional scheme to observe
the right of self-ownership. I will rebut the right to self-ownership from two sides to conclude that a
`just’ institution does have the right to redistribute inequalities.

4
Julian Johannes Immanuel Koch Bayreuth, den 25.06.10

Main Section

Premise

Nozick claims that most principles (especially Ralws’) of distributive justice are “end-result principles”
1
, concerned only about whether a distribution of goods is by some measurement justly spread out
amongst the people2, not taking into consideration “how [the distribution] […] came about” 3. This
“historical”4 approach, concerning the process of distribution, is the starting point of Nozick’s thought
about what he thinks to be a just distribution scheme.

Nozick goes on to argue that government mandated redistribution for the benefit of the poor, e.g.
through taxes, is not only unjust, because this can only be achieved through involuntary coercion of
richer people, but “[t]axation of earnings is on par with forced labor” 5. After all, government is taking
the earnings of someone else, or – what economically amounts to the same 6 – a share of time one
spends working to earn that money. Government might not limit you in the variety of labor to choose
from, but it “forces” you to work for it each day, that is if you want to work at all.

The self-ownership principle

Nozick’s reasoning in his “forced labor” argument is based on the presupposition of self-ownership.
Self-ownership is the notion that every individual should have the right to freedom and control over
his own body, submitting it only on his own bidding, behalf and will – “no moral balancing act can
take place among us; there is no moral outweighing of one of our lives by others so as to lead to a
greater overall social good”.7 Limiting the right to self-ownership would be an act of expropriation of
the `self’, no matter how noble the reasons for limits might be.

Nozick asserts a right to self-ownership and then applies it to a process of distribution of material
goods to check whether it is justified according to the principle. However just because economics
doesn’t differentiate between time spent working and money earned working, there is no reason to
believe that the same applies to ethics. Most ethicists would draw a line between someone making

1
Nozick, Robert. Anarchy, State and Utopia. Page 155.
2
Nozick calls such a principle a „patterned principle”. It is a subdivision of “end-result principles”. Nozick,
Robert. Anarchy, State, and Utopia. Page 156.
3
Nozick, Robert. Anarchy, State, and Utopia. Page 153.
4
Nozick, Robert. Anarchy, State, and Utopia. Page 153
5
Nozick, Robert. Anarchy, State, and Utopia. Page 169.
6
The worker has to be at least indifferent to spend the time working to earn his wage or to not work and not
earn anything. This minimum wage a worker is willing to take for his work is also called reservation wage.
7
Nozick, Robert. Anarchy, State, and Utopia. Page 33.
5
Julian Johannes Immanuel Koch Bayreuth, den 25.06.10

somebody work for hours, and someone taking the money of somebody else. Why? Because forcing
somebody to labor is a direct sign of disrespect of the other’s, to speak in Kantian terms, `autonomy’.
Stealing money is a disrespect of property rights to material goods.

Autonomy

The term `autonomy’ is only concerned with the rational `self’ imposing a moral law on itself by
decision of his free, that is rational, will. It is not concerned with material goods since they do not
have an influence over the free will of the agent and are only the source of drives. The person with
its ability to exercise autonomy cannot be used solely as means and but must always be treated as an
end. The ability to autonomy is hence the origin of a person’s rights. Whenever a right can only be
asserted through material and immaterial goods 8 an obligation arises to grant them, so as to respect
the aggrieved party’s autonomy. Autonomy does not grant people the rights to goods, when they
own more material goods than needed to fulfill their most basic human right, which are derived from
autonomy.

Recourse to self-ownership

Notwithstanding, the term self-ownership, even half-heartedly leaning on Kant’s term of autonomy 9,
secretly inflates the rational self to material boundaries. `Ownership’ includes everything that is
produced and owned by this `self’ and excludes what is not in the `self’s’ belongings. This is a
complete inversion of the `autonomy’ principle granting one rights and material goods as far as
needed to observe these rights to the point that the self is defined through its material possessions10.
Human rights come into existence through the judiciary admission of property rights. The principle of
self-ownership therefore loses its absolute justification not only its self-definitive binding to material
possessions, but also by needing an external judiciary entity to recognize these possessions as actual
possessions of the `self’. The judiciary entity is needed for an official recognition of property rights –
which in consequence establish human rights – otherwise everybody could claim the goods to be his.

8
Of course in order to sustain one’s living `self’, one must eat and drink. But one can argue about whether or
there are also some psychological needs of the `self’ that should be met by the institution as far as it can.
9
Compare Nozick’s evocation of Kant in Nozick, Robert. Anarchy, State, and Utopia. Page 32.
10
And the strange question has to be posed whether more property means more rights. By trying to give the
rich an ultimate justification for keeping their belongings, and denying any involuntary distribution of the richs’
possessions to the poor, thus making the poor totally dependent on the voluntary benevolence of the rich,
making the poors’ rights (as defined though self-ownership) directly attributable to the rich, this seems to be
precisely what Nozick is implying.
6
Julian Johannes Immanuel Koch Bayreuth, den 25.06.10

Effort and self-ownership in praxis

Because defenders of self-ownership try to evade the (nevertheless suiting) formula of self-
ownership being an absurd extension of the `self’ to one’s bank account, they try to recursively
define the right of the `self’ to a good through the amount of effort it has put in obtaining the good.

It is telling that no defender of self-ownership (I know of) has considered that many material goods in
the ownership of the `self´ might not be actually produced by the `self’. For example: Somebody
might have justly acquired great wealth and, after deceasing, bequeathed it to his nearest relative.
Assume that the bequest is recognized by a judiciary entity and therefore carried out `justly’. If a thief
were to steal the money from the heir, would this be a violation of the self-ownership principle?
Remember that Nozick’s demur that the self-ownership principle, – which, as we have seen, is in
itself questionable – evoking the notion of effort being equal to moral desert, doesn’t apply here,
since there is no effort, no production of the `self’.

Redistribution as a means for equality of opportunity

What if we consider not heritage, but distribution of natural abilities of body and mind among
people, which we receive similarly effortlessly. There is no injustice involved in the process of natural
distribution, no matter how unequally distributed. The injustice comes only about at exactly the
point when one has command over unequal distribution and doesn’t level it. However, we do not
have command over natural distribution until after it has taken place. So now it is our job to figure
out what to do about it. Of course there are people who have worked considerably much harder for
their top spot in the social latter than others, but this argument insinuating different moral desert for
different effort is no argument against redistribution of goods by an institution. Precisely the point of
unequal effort with equal outcome makes equality of opportunity 11 a goal worthy of aspiration –
even if this means taking (a portion of) the fruits of the efforts of someone away who has worked for
them very hard. In praxis there is no perfectly just institution.

Nevertheless, keeping in mind that we approach `justice’ from the complex perspective of an
institution, even if the institution cannot keep track of every one’s individual efforts and their moral
desert alongside them, even if it cannot equalize the full extent of unequal distribution of intellectual
and physical abilities, it can try. The degree to which it will be able to level inequality, without
harming the taxed too much, and offer an equality of opportunity will determine its `justness’.

11
Unlike Nozick, I don’t value redistribution in itself, but as a means, only insofar as it creates equal
opportunities.
7
Julian Johannes Immanuel Koch Bayreuth, den 25.06.10

Conclusion

To recapitulate: I have posed two arguments refuting the principle of self-ownership.

 Firstly, I showed wherein the notion of human rights originates in Kant’s “autonomy”, which
the self-ownership principle claiming to be is partially leaning on; to then demark
“autonomy” from the self-ownership principle, in that the self-ownership principle unduly
extends the concept of human rights to material goods.
 Secondly, I scrutinized in a borderline scenario (heritage) the self-ownership principle’s
insinuation that all the goods we receive belong to us as moral desert as results of our
efforts. I came to the conclusion that this concept of moral desert is inapplicable in such a
borderline scenario since there is no effort involved. Finally, I have shown that there is great
similarity between my borderline scenario of heritage and the distribution of natural abilities,
questioning whether we do have a moral desert to the products of the naturally distributed
abilities at all. If the inequalities reach such extension, that not even the most basic rights of
people can be observed, an institution must intervene.

With this essay I hope to have shown the theoretical and practical boundaries of Nozick’s and others’
arguments against redistributive institutions based on concepts of self-ownership. As for economics:
Self-ownership is an archaic concept anyways – it assumes that the goods we produce are the fruits
of solely our own efforts, all too readily ignoring that we harvest on what inventors, investors and
entrepreneurs have seeded before us, that multiplier effects may engage largely independent of our
individual efforts – and may multiply inequality of opportunities, the discussion of which would burst
the framework of this essay.

8
Julian Johannes Immanuel Koch Bayreuth, den 25.06.10

Sources

Kant, Immanuel: Kritik der praktischen Vernunft. Stuttgart (Reclam 2008).

Kant Immanuel: Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten. Stuttgart (Reclam 1996).

My self-owned brain.

Nozick, Robert (N.A.): Anarchy, State, and Utopia. 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4, IJF, UK: (Blackwell 1980 ).

S-ar putea să vă placă și