Related Ideas

In 1974 Robert Nozick, a Harvard philosopher, published Anarchy, State, and Utopia. In doing so, he restated political libertarianism with great philosophical sophistication. There had been previous treatments of libertarianism by professional philosophers such as Libertarianism by John Hospers. Nozick, however, like Rawls, attracted widespread attention and put modern libertarianism 'on the map' for the politically attentive public.

Many philosophers have criticized Robert Nozick for not giving sufficient weight to either the logical or the empirical consequences of accepting his "entitlement theory" of rights or "side constraints."

On actual consequences: (check to be sure this is an argument using predicted consequences)

Scanlon, . 123 in Reading Nozick.

"It is central to Nozick's argument that the rights with which he is concerned are claimed to be natural rights in the stronger sense [i.e., they are found in the state of nature]. The objections I have raised to his examples almost all demand that he consider the consequences of enforcement of absolute property and contract rights and that he explain why the loss of liberty this involves for some people is not worse than that which is involved in the alternative systems which he deplores." (Brackets added.)

Or Iris Young:

"I disagree with Nozick that end-state patterns are irrelevant to questions of justice. Because they inhibit the ability of some people to live and be healthy, or grant some people resources that allow them to coerce others, some distributions must come into question no matter how they came about. Evaluating patterns of distribution is often an important starting point for questioning about justice. For many issues of social justice, however, what s important is not the particular pattern of distribution at a particular moment, but rather the reproduction of a regular distributive pattern over time." [Justice and the Politics of Difference, p. 29]

On logical consequences:

Scheffer in Reading Nozick points out that Nozick ignores some extraordinary consequences. 

"It is an extraordinary but apparent consequence of this view that for a government to tax each of its able-bodied citizens five dollars a year to support cripples and orphans would violate the rights of the able-bodied, and would be morally impermissible, whereas to refrain from taxation even if it meant allowing the cripples and orphans to starve to death would be the morally required governmental policy." p. 151.

Reference: