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Anarchy, State, and Utopia

Robert Nozick · 5 HN comments
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Amazon Summary
In this brilliant and widely acclaimed book, winner of the 1975 National Book Award, Robert Nozick challenges the most commonly held political and social positions of our age -- liberal, socialist, and conservative.
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There's a few issues with this hard-line utilitarian POV, mainly what's called the "utility monster", first discussed by Robert Nozick in Anarchy, State, and Utopia[1] (1967). This is getting pretty complicated (and I could very well be wrong), but I think that "value" is probably some kind of combination of what you do for the firm (e.g. how much money you bring in) with what the firm does for society.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Anarchy-State-Utopia-Robert-Nozick/dp...

subroutine
> I think that "value" is probably some kind of combination of what you do for the firm (e.g. how much money you bring in) with what the firm does for society.

If a female lawyer successfully defends an actual murderer, does that provide more societal value than when a male lawyer successfully defends an actual murderer?

Quoting Mises who is the Marx of anarcho-capitalism:

> To be opposed to the state is then not necessarily to be opposed to services that have often been linked with it; to be opposed to the state does not necessarily imply that we must be opposed to police protection, courts, arbitration, the minting of money, postal service, or roads and highways. Some anarchists have indeed been opposed to police and to all physical coercion in defense of person and property, but this is not inherent in and is fundamentally irrelevant to the anarchist position, which is precisely marked by opposition to all physical coercion invasive of, or aggressing against, person and property.

and

> An important point to remember is that any society, be it statist or anarchist, has to have some way of resolving disputes that will gain a majority consensus in society. There would be no need for courts or arbitrators if everyone were omniscient and knew instantaneously which persons were guilty of any given crime or violation of contract. Since none of us is omniscient, there has to be some method of deciding who is the criminal or lawbreaker which will gain legitimacy; in short, whose decision will be accepted by the great majority of the public.

https://mises.org/library/society-without-state

(Note: not defending this stuff, just pointing it out for sake of discussion).

Elsewhere someone pointed out the book "Anarchy, State, and Utopia" which has a better overview of what libertarians believe in. Which is a "night-watchman" state, a minimalist government which includes courts, police, and border control.

https://www.amazon.com/Anarchy-State-Utopia-Robert-Nozick/dp...

(Not to take this post too serious, but I'll take the bait)

I'd argue that the solution proposed by Ethereum in this blog post is not antithetical to mainstream Libertarianism. It actually fits perfectly well into the role the majority of libertarians believe a state should take.

To begin with, from my understanding they merely proposed a solution which the community has to agree to implement. Just like modifying the bitcoin codebase.

It's still ultimately an additional layer of decentralization in between. Taken as a whole - even if Ethereum takes action against the attacker - what DAO represents would still be very very far from the representative democracy style system that libertarians take issue with.

Importantly, libertarians are not all anarchists (or 'crypto-anarchists' or 'anarcho-capitalists' to be more accurate) who believe in total decentralized control structures. Mainstream libertarians wish for a minimal state or "night-watchman" state, a not the total absence of a state.

This the most prevalent myth about libertarianism and the faulty premise of most attacks against it.

Even many hardcore anarcho-capitalists are against the idea of decentralized judicial and law enforcement systems - as they see it as unworkable.

In the book "Anarchy, State, and Utopia" [1] popular libertarian thinker Robert Nozick argues that

    [..] only a minimal state "limited to the narrow functions of protection against force, theft, fraud, enforcement of contracts, and so on" could be justified without violating people's rights. 
Therefore supporting the solution Ethereum proposed does not make you less of a libertarian. But it does make you less of a crypto-anarchist.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Anarchy-State-Utopia-Robert-Nozick/dp...

llamataboot
Doesn't necessarily make you less of an anarchist either. Anarchy isn't an absence of rules or decisions, it's having decision making mechanisms that are non-hierarchical (now, the preferred size of those decision making structures and how to keep them from becoming psuedo (or real) States in their own right is a whole different discussion). In this case, one could argue that miners are making a decision collectively through a very imperfect mechanism (subject to possible hijacking, attacks, and tyranny of the majority), but still a non-hierarchical one.
A classic text on the philosophical underpinnings of (US) liberalism with regard to economic redistribution policies is A Theory of Justice by John Rawls, a renowned professor of philosophy at Harvard.

After reading Rawls, I'd suggest maybe reading Robert Nozick's libertarian leaning Anarchy, State, and Utopia. Nozick was another distinguished philosopher from Harvard writing about the same time as Rawls. Nozick comes to a completely different conclusion than Rawls.

Both books are good and completely accessible to an ordinary reader (i.e. philosophy degree not required). However, they are serious and not as entertaining as the Friedmans' Free to Choose. While the two philosophy books address the question of what should a fair society look like from a philosophical perspective, I feel they don't address the aspects of human nature that have proven troublesome in socialist economies as well as Free to Choose.

Finally another classic, The Fatal Conceit by F. A. Hayek considers the practicality of socialism from an economic position in a more focused way. Like the previously mentioned books, it is an easy read.

These books may not reflect cutting edge thought, having been written in the 70's and 80's, but they were a useful starting point for me when I started to think about these issues more deeply and they are considered seminal works that in my opinion shouldn't be skipped while studying the questions of political and economic theory.

A Conflict of Visions by Thomas Sowell further reflects on this question and makes some conclusions about why smart people end up disagreeing in such fundamental ways. I find Sowell's thinking and writing to be clear and well expressed.

Finally, an interesting book addresses the puzzling and related question of why does the academic community so easily accommodate views so antithetical to a scientific world view. I believe that this at the heart of the questions raised by the original NYT piece. The book is Higher Superstition by Gross and Levitt. While interesting this book is erudite and seems directed to narrower audience than those mentioned above, expecting a well-read reader.

[1] Rawls, A theory of justice. http://www.amazon.com/Theory-Justice-John-Rawls/dp/067400078...

[2] Nozick, Anarchy, state and utopia. http://www.amazon.com/Anarchy-State-Utopia-Robert-Nozick/dp/...

[3] Milton and Rose Friedman, Free to choose: a personal statement. http://www.amazon.com/Free-Choose-Statement-Milton-Friedman/...

[4] Hayek and Bartley, The fatal conceit: the errors of socialism. http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_1_9?url=search-alias%...

[5] Gross and Levitt, Higher superstition: the academic left and its quarrels with science. http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dst...

panglott
John Rawls is of course the right answer here, but it seems odd that you cite Hayek, Nozick, Sowell, &c., who are all diametrically opposed.

The other one I'd recommend is John Stuart Mill.

internaut
I am not joking when I say I don't know a single liberal who has read Rawls or Mill.

In fact it is curious how little 'well educated' people read. They appear to absorb their opinions from Thomas Friedman and George Monbiot as if by osmosis.

That is not to say there don't exist conservatives or libertarians who also do not read books. Certainly I know religious conservatives who read very little outside of the Bible. I just also know a lot of college educated people whose houses are as bare as caves when it comes to books and most of them are liberal. They spend most of their time working long hours or frenetically socializing, not book friendly activities.

My guess is that few of any political conviction go to the source.

Knock yourself out:

http://www.amazon.com/Anarchy-State-Utopia-Robert-Nozick/dp/...

http://www.amazon.com/A-Theory-Justice-John-Rawls/dp/0674000...

(Seriously, what kind of response are you expecting? There are so many assumptions built in to your question that you're basically asking for a summary of political philosophy).

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