Quiz 3 Review

Readings:
- Rawls: 2 Principles of Justice, Maximin, Veil of Ignorance
- Nozick: Minimal state, just acquisition of property
- Friedman: social responsibility of a corporation
- Arneson:
- Ciepley: corps are neither public nor private entities
- Anderson: hierarchical states inherently promote inequality which is bad

10/15
● Rawls discussion
○ All rational people want more primary goods (rights and liberties → wealth/income, opportunities, power)
○ Veil of Ignorance
■ Allows fair terms of cooperation
■ The way to care about everyone equally is to pretend we don’t know who we are
■ We will thus naturally want to protect ourselves and look out for our best interests and want the best for the
worse off ​in case ​we are the ones that are worst off (since we don’t know)
○ 2 Principles of Justice
■ 1 - equality in assignment of rights and liberties
■ 2 - difference Principle
● Economic inequality is ok as long as it helps the disadvantaged (incentivizes them to work harder
to make more money → we’re all better off)
● Mutually disinterested
● Same as Pareto efficient? → No. As long as those who are worst off are made better off in some
aspect, others (like the most advantaged) can be made slightly worse off (Rawls)
○ Going from ​A​ to ​C​ = Pareto improvement
○ Going from ​D​ to ​C​ = satisfies the difference principle (improves the worst off)
but NOT Pareto (makes others worse off)

Least Advantaged Advantaged Most Advantaged

A $10 K $10 K $10 K

B $12 K $30 K $80 K

C $30 K $90 K $150 K

D $20 K $100 K $500 K

○ Maximin - always maximize the minimum (without creating a new minimum)

■ Because we don’t know anything about ourselves, we’ll be the most risk-averse (you would basically look
at everything from the perspective of the poor)
■ Compare alternatives by the worst possible outcome under each alternative, and choose that one that
maximizes the utility of the worst outcome
■ Ex. Action A guarantees 1 dollar at worst but offers only 1.01 dollars at best, while action B guarantees
0.99 dollar at worst and 1,000,000 dollars at best; maximin dictates that one should choose action A
○ Social bias of self-respect - focus on the disparity between classes and the opportunities that subsequently arise
■ While the move from A to B is a good one in Rawls’ eyes, the large gap is questionable

Least Advantaged Advantaged Most Advantaged

A $10 K $10 K $10 K

B $12 K $200 K $500 K

Quiz 3 Review

10/22
● Nozick discussion
○ Direct counter to Rawls
○ Question: why is it fair to look at society from the viewpoint of the least advantaged?
○ Distributive justice implies a central distributor (mirrors Hayek)
■ Necessitates taxes which are a form of forced labor which is theft
■ Assumption: poor people are lazy and don’t want to work
○ Patterning - distribution according to some standard like IQ, height, etc.
○ No society is just because property/land wasn’t justly acquired
● Lockean Proviso - “​whilst individuals have a right to private property from nature by working on it, they can do so only ‘at
least where there is enough, and as good, left in common for others.’"
○ What happens when there is not any more property to go around?

10/24
● Rawls/Hume​ vs. ​Nozick/Locke
○ Private property:
■ Nozick - inalienable right to property (absolute); tax only for national security
■ Rawls - does not suggest we have a natural right to property; useful, may need to redistribute
○ Poor vs. wealthy
■ Nozick - we need the wealthy and should be worried about them as much as the poor
■ Rawls - we need to help the poor
○ Better vs. worse off
■ Nozick - we don’t know who’s the better/worse endowed because people move freely in society
■ Rawls - lucky to be talented; random; wants to incentivize people to continue to work hard
○ Labor
■ Nozick - people should keep what they make ($)
■ Rawls - people only make what they make because they live in a society of cooperation
○ Just acquisition
■ Nozick - no fair/just acquisition of labor/property
● Social cooperation - we make more by working together than separate (Hobbes, Hume, Axelrod - need government to avoid
state of nature)
○ Society is a cooperative venture for mutual advantage
● Wilt Chamberlain - we want commodious living; our demand allows him to play basketball for a living
● Problem with Nozick’s theory of acquisition: ​everything​ today is unjustly acquired
○ i.e. a computer now, because parts, $ and labor used to create it were unjustly acquired → the person who created
the computer should get the majority of the $ generated by the invention but not all

10/29
● What happens if you don’t want to work? Should you receive welfare benefits?
○ Equality of resources
○ Equality of opportunity
○ Equal opportunity for welfare
● “Slavery of the talented” → those who aren’t disabled work at least in part for those who are disabled to benefit from
● You can control your preferences/how hard you work
○ Inequality based on own preferences/abilities/choices
○ We help those who aren’t as able to work but not those who don’t work because its their preference (i.e. disability
benefits vs. surfer boy in Hawaii)
● Chance plays a large part in our lives
● Have a right to satisfy your preferences but not to force others to satisfy them for you
● Friedman: social responsibility of a corporation is to maximize profits
○ However, good “social responsibility” is good PR which could increase profits
● Ciepley: corporations lie somewhere in between public and private
Quiz 3 Review
○ Corporations are good because they provide better products; individuals couldn’t do what large corps do; better
mitigate risk; pull capital; entity shielding (LLCs)

10/31
● Ciepley discussion
○ LLCs pool risk over many people, have the ability to raise significantly more capital
■ Allow us to be a more productive society
■ Fines get diffused out
■ More prone to take risk; similar to a moral hazard
○ Without government, corporations wouldn’t exist (can justify state regulation in this way)
■ In order to redistribute $, we need $ (duh)
○ LLCs don’t fit into Nozick’s world
■ Corps only exist because of the framework instituted by the government
● Anderson
○ [Spinner-Halev speaks down upon this piece]
○ Transition from egalitarian to hierarchical societies ​(skeptical of human nature being innately egalitarian though!)
○ Focuses on equality and scale (why do we become more unequal as size increases?)
■ Assert all hierarchy is bad but it is necessary with economies of scale (decrease cost as increase production)
■ Hierarchical states decrease violence and increase division of labor
○ Discussion of Citizens United case (dealing with regulation of political campaign spending by organizations)

What is Nozick’s theory of justice?

What are Nozick’s arguments about:
Property
Taxes
Patterning
Distributive justice
The idea of social cooperation
Rawls’s theory
Walt Chamberlain
Robinson Crusoes

What are the different views of equality that Arneson discuss? Which ones does he dismiss? Why? Which does he favor? Why?

What is the social responsibility of business, according to Friedman?

How is Ciepley’s article an argument against Nozick and Friedman? What are the special features of the corporation?

Why is equality hard to achieve in the modern world, according to Anderson?