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View Full Version : Robert Nozick - Great Philosopher or Greatest Philosopher?




yongrel
07-30-2009, 07:55 PM
http://media-2.web.britannica.com/eb-media/37/100837-004-D808ACBB.jpg

For someone whose intellectual accomplishments underpin much of the pro-liberty rhetoric on this forum, it's surprising how infrequently his name comes up.

Simply stated, Nozick was a badass.

erowe1
07-30-2009, 07:59 PM
You look familiar. Are you the Iron Chef?

familydog
07-30-2009, 08:14 PM
http://media-2.web.britannica.com/eb-media/37/100837-004-D808ACBB.jpg

For someone whose intellectual accomplishments underpin much of the pro-liberty rhetoric on this forum, it's surprising how infrequently his name comes up.

Simply stated, Nozick was a badass.

I agree!

Alas, he argued why anarchy is not sustainable. Thus, many here treat him and his ideas as statist and as an enemy.

Go figure. :confused:

yongrel
07-30-2009, 08:40 PM
I agree!

Alas, he argued why anarchy is not sustainable. Thus, many here treat him and his ideas as statist and as an enemy.

Go figure. :confused:

Eh, anarchists can dig Nozick because he acknowledges the morality of anarchy as being supreme. He essentially arrives at the anarcho-capitalist conclusion that private security contractors could replace government. He simply carries that logic further and arrives at the idea that the minimal state is the natural progression of this.

familydog
07-30-2009, 09:16 PM
Eh, anarchists can dig Nozick because he acknowledges the morality of anarchy as being supreme. He essentially arrives at the anarcho-capitalist conclusion that private security contractors could replace government. He simply carries that logic further and arrives at the idea that the minimal state is the natural progression of this.

This is the reason I don't understand why he is treated like he has the plague by so many anarchists.

jmlfod87
07-30-2009, 09:23 PM
Roderick T. Long:


Robert Nozick and Tyler Cowen: Private Protection Agencies Will Become a de facto Government

Okay, one last consideration I want to talk about. This is a question that originally was raised by Robert Nozick and has since been pushed farther by Tyler Cowen. Nozick said: Suppose you have anarchy. One of three things will happen. Either the agencies will fight – and he gives two different scenarios of what will happen if they fight. But I’ve already talked about what happens if they fight, so I’ll talk about the third option. What if they don’t fight? Then he says, if instead they agree to these mutual arbitration contracts and so forth, then basically this whole thing just turns into a government. And then Tyler Cowen has pushed this argument farther. He said what happens is that basically this forms into a cartel, and it’s going to be in the interest of this cartel to sort of turn itself into a government. And any new agency that comes along, they can just boycott it.

Just as it’s in your interest if you come along with a new ATM card that it be compatible with everyone else’s machines, so if you come along with a brand new protection agency, it is in your interest that you get to be part of this system of contracts and arbitration and so forth that the existing ones have. Consumers aren’t going to come to you if they find out that you don’t have any agreements as to what happens if you’re in a conflict with these other agencies. And so, this cartel will be able to freeze everyone out.

Well, could that happen? Sure. All kinds of things could happen. Half the country could commit suicide tomorrow. But, is it likely? Is this cartel likely to be able to abuse its power in this way? The problem is cartels are unstable for all the usual reasons. That doesn’t mean that it’s impossible that a cartel succeed. After all, people have free will. But it’s unlikely because the very incentives that lead you to form the cartel also lead you to cheat on it – because it’s always in the interest of anyone to make agreements outside the cartel once they are in it.

Bryan Caplan makes a distinction between self-enforcing boycotts and non-self-enforcing boycotts. Self-enforcing boycotts are ones where the boycott is pretty stable because it’s a boycott against, for example, doing business with people who cheat their business partners. Now, you don’t have to have some iron resolve of moral commitment in order to avoid doing business with people who cheat their business partners. You have a perfectly self-interested reason not to do business with those people.

But think instead of a commitment not to do business with someone because you don’t like their religion or something like that, or they’re a member of the wrong protection agency, one that your fellow protection agencies told you not to deal with – well, the boycott might work. Maybe enough people (and maybe everyone) in the cartel are so committed to upholding the cartel that they just won’t deal with the person. Is that possible? Yes. But, if we assume that they formed the cartel out of their own economic self-interest, then the economic self-interest is precisely what leads to the undermining because it’s in their interest to deal with the person, just as it’s always in your interest to engage in mutually beneficial trade.


http://www.lewrockwell.com/long/long11.html

Kotin
07-30-2009, 09:47 PM
would you recommend any specific book by him?

Imperial
07-30-2009, 10:12 PM
would you recommend any specific book by him?

Anarchy, Utopia and State. After this book his philosophy continued to change. He also was one of the few actual philosophers to review Ayn Rand's philosophy, so you may want to check that out.