============================== "Anarchy, State, and Utopia" ============================== Have read Robert Nozick's "Anarchy, State, and Utopia", another good book from the long queue. Some of his views I do not share (social liberalism looks much more appealing to me than libertarianism), but as usual, exposition to varied ones, and especially those with good argumentation, is useful: for general knowledge and context, as well as to contrast one's views with those, to try identifying differences underpinning different understanding, look for counterarguments. Additionally, Nozick raises more questions than proposes answers, so it provides a decent quantity of food for thought. Some of the examples of things I disagree with (or, to put it in another way, do not understand Nozick's position, maybe simply because of misunderstanding what is written; re-reading it someday with a closer attention to those might be useful): - His criticism of "end-state" principles of justice is about voluntary transfers (exercise of the ownership rights) breaking the predefined distribution patterns. He counts Rawls's difference principle as "end-state", since it restricts distribution. Yet I fail to see how an individual transferring goods whatever way they wish would be contrary to the difference principle, which is about organization of institutions. Though he criticized (and quoted) the original edition of "A Theory of Justice", and I have only read the revised one, so it may be the source of some mismatches. - Seems to mostly ignore the "original position" and the whole social contract approach in Rawls's criticism, but when considers the "original position", argues that the joint product of social cooperation can be completely disentangled, because bonuses to be paid (to provide motivations) require that. The implication and such a strict requirement for motivation seem dubious. - Apparently he supports patents and copyright law, possibly viewing them as a kind of contract. While the kind of contract that introduces taxes for social purposes he views as forced labor, at times seems to mock such implicit contracts. Both points make sense separately, but not sure how arguments used against the latter do not convince him to ignore the former. - Speaking of application of arguments to unintended subjects, I suspect the arguments for state as a protective agency, upon transferring to it the right for self-defense, can be relatively easily extended to areas like medicine (especially for epidemics), perhaps firefighting (and related inspections), which also favor a monopoly, organized and decisive action, without alternative agencies with possibly inferior standards, or some people harming others by abstaining. While a protective agency may also start drafting people if they will have trouble hiring them, growing this minimal state further. - One may argue for more rights than those on property (including life); the selection of those in the state of nature seems a little arbitrary, mixed with a moral theory postulating those natural rights, so they are fixed. Though even with fixed moral rights, a society may strive to provide more of conventional rights to its members, if they so desire, which they seem likely to. Though this is basically another way to the social contract argument. - Apparently he views more egalitarian positions as stemming from envy. I view it as a likely way to reach an agreement needed for cooperation, and the tendency to demand this kind of fairness looks to me like an evolved self-repair mechanism for a society, to discourage parasitic behavior. - The history of morally justified actions, on which Nozick focuses, becomes increasingly unverifiable in the long run. - At times he seems overly pedantic, and at times reminded me of Socrates with his questioning: the questioning in general is a good approach, but can be disproportional. That way, one may also question whether the "voluntary" contracts considered by Nozick are really voluntary in a useful sense (to exclude, say, scams), whether it makes sense to consider morality as something fixed and shared. He defines those voluntary contracts as any that do not violate the rights, but the facts of such violations can also be debated, since those are not basic and immediately knowable parts of reality. Or one may even dive into extreme reductionism and reject theories not justified starting from physical models. But that is not a practical way to compose a political theory: one has to settle on "pretty good", as in "worse is better". - Nozick prefers "invisible hand" explanations, which seem neat to me as well, but they also seem to neglect political participation, human capability for planning and cooperation, do not quite treat people as intelligent beings. - Assumes that people want more than the "experience machine", which I am not sure about. - Some of his examples conflate interpersonal relationships and material possessions. - The government of the praised minimal state is left mostly undefined. It is some kind of a monopolistic corporation, so possibly controlled like those usually are, which would make it a dictatorship; something like a military junta or a securocracy. Unclear what would prevent power abuses in it. It also felt like the law of the instrument is in action, when Nozick presents utopia as a competitive market. As well as a minimal state. Like "market-oriented philosophy" (akin to "object-oriented programming"), where everything is a market. Though it can also be described as different optics, which seem to be especially apparent when they differ between the writer and the reader. The last chapter made me to draw parallels with writing a hypervisor instead of an operating system, a combinator calculus or lambda calculus implementation instead of a useful programming language, or indeed a framework (as Nozick calls it) instead of application software or a political theory: minimal and neat, and other things can be set on top, but not quite the goal itself. Though still useful for educational purposes, and probably in certain situations. Apparently due to such pure libertarianism not being satisfactory even to some libertarians, as it lacks what is usually perceived as social justice, there is "bleeding-heart libertarianism", as an alternative name for neoclassical liberalism. As I understand it, some of its proponents argue that social justice will emerge from libertarianism (as utilitarians may argue that rights and freedoms would emerge out of utilitarianism), while others advocate for introduction of universal basic income to achieve that. Not sure why to still call it "libertarianism" at that point with the latter approach: seems more confusing than useful for categorization. Though probably it still underlines the priorities. As usual, it is tricky to pick the next book, since there are many promising ones in the queue: on history, economics, philosophy, political science. Not to mention those on STEM subjects, which I neglect these days. But it is also exciting. In other news, my VPS is back online, after about 44 days of downtime. Fortunately I had no mail correspondence during those (so did not have to deal with inserting messages from zoho.com to a mailbox manually), and noticed that I have almost no active XMPP contacts left, so it was not much of a loss. A case of feeling relatively free and relaxed due to not having (or having few) attachments or obligations, at least in this small area. ---- :Date: 2026-07-22