[lbo-talk] Mankiw and Nozick's Wilt Chamberlain example

[ken hanly]

 There seems to me a family resemblance between Robert Nozick's Wilt Chamberlain example that is supposed to show that any patterned view of justice such as that of Rawls will involve continuous interference with individuals and Mankiw's discussion of his star performers such as Steve Jobs, except that Nozick seems much sharper and Wilt Chamberlain does not depend upon patent rights to amass his wealth as Jobs and Apple do.There is the same idea that the pattern in this case of equal distribution of wealth  is disturbed by people who are productive and surely "deserve" their rewards or at least the rewards come from demand just as in the Chamberlain case.

http://seattlecentral.edu/faculty/jhubert/wiltchamberlainargument.html

Nozick�s Wilt Chamberlain Argument
 
Nozick's famous Wilt Chamberlain argument is an attempt to show that patterned principles of just distribution are incompatible with liberty. He asks us to assume that the original distribution in society, D1 is ordered by our choice of patterned principle, for instance Rawls's Difference Principle. Wilt Chamberlain is an extremely popular basketball player in this society, and Nozick further assumes 1 million people are willing to freely give WC 25 cents each to watch him play basketball over the course of a season (we assume no other transactions occur). Wilt now has $250,000, a much larger sum than any of the other people in the society. The new distribution in society, call it D2, obviously is no longer ordered by our favored pattern that ordered D1. However Nozick argues that D2 is just. For if each agent freely exchanges some of his D1 share with WC and D1 was a just distribution (we know D1 was just, because it was ordered according to

 your favorite patterned principle of distribution), how can D2 fail to be a just distribution? Thus Nozick argues that what the Wilt Chamberlain example shows is that no patterned principle of just distribution will be compatible with liberty. In order to preserve the pattern which arranged D1, the state will have to continually interfere with people's ability to freely exchange their D1 shares. For any exchange of D1 shares explicitly involves violating the pattern that originally ordered it.
 
 
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