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I just have to say something
here. It seems to me that there is a real
irony in what Dee and Ann are saying. Dee is a
libertarian rights theorist and Ann is a
utilitarian. They propose radically different
views of morality and they offer radically
different moral principles. But in one respect
their theories lead to the same counterintuitive
conclusion. H.L.A. Hart made the point in a
very fine paper of his called "Between Utility
and Rights":
It is a
paradoxical feature of Nozick's
argument, hostile though it is to any
form of utilitarianism, that it yields a
result identical with one of the least
acceptable conclusions of an unqualified
maximising utilitarianism, namely that
given certain conditions there is
nothing to choose between a society
where few enjoy great happiness and very
many very little, and a society where
happiness is more equally spread. For
the utilitarian the condition is that in
both societies either aggregate or
average welfare is the same. For Nozick
the condition is a historical one: that
the patterns of distribution of wealth
which exist at any time in a society
should have come about through exercise
of the rights and power of acquisition
and voluntary transfer included in
ownership and without any violation of
the few basic rights. Given the
satisfaction of this historical
condition, how people fare under the
resulting patterns of distribution,
whether grossly inegalitarian or
egalitarian, is of no moral
significance. The only virtue of social
institutions on this view is that they
protect the few basic rights, and their
only vice is failure to do this. [Hart,
"Between Utility and Rights," Columbia
Law Review, Vol. 79,
No. 5 (Jun., 1979). p. 833]
The point is that both utilitarians and
libertarians like Nozick have a strange
blindness to the consequences of their theories.
The utilitarian cannot see that maximizing
welfare may at times allow one group of people
to be ruthlessly exploited for the sake of
others. The libertarian cannot see that very
strong individual rights may make it impossible
to do things that would greatly benefit many
people. I think that this will become even more
clear when we discuss the libertarian view of
property rights.
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