#anarchystateandutopia

Perfect

Nozick attempts to establish how government and property could be established without violating people’s rights to themselves and to nature, by starting with voluntary protection agencies who out compete one another or find it in their interest to submit to higher arbitration between themselves. Nozick has two important notions for this: 1) side constraints and 2) entitlement theory. Side constraints recognize that ethics is about the pursuit of ends rather than the end itself and so certain kinds of actions need to be restrained between individuals in principle to allow autonomy to pursue what is good. This is a position between consequentialism and deontology. Entitlement theory means that it is how external things are acquired rather than the pattern of distribution that matters and gives one a right against others for a thing, rather than a right from others. Assuming self-ownership, the conditions are 1) original acquisition of unclaimed nature (homestead) 2) voluntary transfer of justly acquired things 3) no entitlement but thru repeated application of 1&2. These conditions are supposed to result in a state and social order not violating justice and justifies no further redistribution. Any kind of community no matter how restrictive internally is permissible if begun by this process and thereafter consented to by future members, allowing individuals to construct the societies they see fit.