Libertarianism. Is it more than just selfishness?

PVW said:

Presumably, then, the only proper criterion for the distribution of barbering services is barbering need. But why must the internal goal of the activity take precedence over, for example, the person’s particular purpose in performing the activity? (We ignore the question of whether one activity can fall under two different descriptions involving different internal goals.) If someone becomes a barber because he likes talking to a variety of different people, and so on, is it unjust of him to allocate his services to those he most likes to talk to? Or if he works as a barber in order to earn money to pay tuition at school, may he cut the hair of only those who pay or tip well? Why may not a barber use exactly the same criteria in allocating his services as someone else whose activities have no internal goal involving others? Need a gardener allocate his services to those lawns which need him most?

In what way does the situation of a doctor differ? Why must his activities be allocated via the internal goal of medical care? (If there was no “shortage,” could some then be allocated using other criteria as well?) It seems clear that he needn’t do that; just because he has this skill, why should he bear the costs of the desired allocation, why is he less entitled to pursue his own goals, within the special circumstances of practicing medicine, than everyone else? So it is society that, somehow, is to arrange things so that the doctor, in pursuing his own goals, allocates according to need; for example, the society pays him to do this. But why must the society do this? (Should they do it for barbering as well?) Presumably, because medical care is important, people need it very much. This is true of food as well, though farming does not have an internal goal that refers to other people in the way doctoring does. When the layers of Williams’ argument are peeled away, what we arrive at is the claim that society (that is, each of us acting together in some organized fashion) should make provision for the important needs of all of its members. This claim, of course, has been stated many times before. Despite appearances, Williams presents no argument for it. Like others, Williams looks only to questions of allocation. He ignores the question of where the things or actions to be allocated and distributed come from. Consequently, he does not consider whether they come already tied to people who have entitlements over them (surely the case for service activities, which are people’s actions), people who therefore may decide for them- selves to whom they will give the thing and on what grounds.

About 2/3 through the book, I came across this (to me, rather incredible -- not in a good way) passage. Here Nozick is discussing an argument by Bernard Williams that medical care should be allocated based on need. Nozick:

Presumably, then, the only proper criterion for the distribution of barbering services is barbering need. But why must the internal goal of the activity take precedence over, for example, the person’s particular purpose in performing the activity? (We ignore the question of whether one activity can fall under two different descriptions involving different internal goals.) If someone becomes a barber because he likes talking to a variety of different people, and so on, is it unjust of him to allocate his services to those he most likes to talk to? Or if he works as a barber in order to earn money to pay tuition at school, may he cut the hair of only those who pay or tip well? Why may not a barber use exactly the same criteria in allocating his services as someone else whose activities have no internal goal involving others? Need a gardener allocate his services to those lawns which need him most?

In what way does the situation of a doctor differ? Why must his activities be allocated via the internal goal of medical care? (If there was no “shortage,” could some then be allocated using other criteria as well?) It seems clear that he needn’t do that; just because he has this skill, why should he bear the costs of the desired allocation, why is he less entitled to pursue his own goals, within the special circumstances of practicing medicine, than everyone else? So it is society that, somehow, is to arrange things so that the doctor, in pursuing his own goals, allocates according to need; for example, the society pays him to do this. But why must the society do this? (Should they do it for barbering as well?) Presumably, because medical care is important, people need it very much. This is true of food as well, though farming does not have an internal goal that refers to other people in the way doctoring does. When the layers of Williams’ argument are peeled away, what we arrive at is the claim that society (that is, each of us acting together in some organized fashion) should make provision for the important needs of all of its members. This claim, of course, has been stated many times before. Despite appearances, Williams presents no argument for it. Like others, Williams looks only to questions of allocation. He ignores the question of where the things or actions to be allocated and distributed come from. Consequently, he does not consider whether they come already tied to people who have entitlements over them (surely the case for service activities, which are people’s actions), people who therefore may decide for them- selves to whom they will give the thing and on what grounds.

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Presumably, then, the only proper criterion for the distribution of barbering services is barbering need. But why must the internal goal of the activity take precedence over, for example, the person’s particular purpose in performing the activity? (We ignore the question of whether one activity can fall under two different descriptions involving different internal goals.) If someone becomes a barber because he likes talking to a variety of different people, and so on, is it unjust of him to allocate his services to those he most likes to talk to? Or if he works as a barber in order to earn money to pay tuition at school, may he cut the hair of only those who pay or tip well? Why may not a barber use exactly the same criteria in allocating his services as someone else whose activities have no internal goal involving others? Need a gardener allocate his services to those lawns which need him most?

In what way does the situation of a doctor differ? Why must his activities be allocated via the internal goal of medical care? (If there was no “shortage,” could some then be allocated using other criteria as well?) It seems clear that he needn’t do that; just because he has this skill, why should he bear the costs of the desired allocation, why is he less entitled to pursue his own goals, within the special circumstances of practicing medicine, than everyone else? So it is society that, somehow, is to arrange things so that the doctor, in pursuing his own goals, allocates according to need; for example, the society pays him to do this. But why must the society do this? (Should they do it for barbering as well?) Presumably, because medical care is important, people need it very much. This is true of food as well, though farming does not have an internal goal that refers to other people in the way doctoring does. When the layers of Williams’ argument are peeled away, what we arrive at is the claim that society (that is, each of us acting together in some organized fashion) should make provision for the important needs of all of its members. This claim, of course, has been stated many times before. Despite appearances, Williams presents no argument for it. Like others, Williams looks only to questions of allocation. He ignores the question of where the things or actions to be allocated and distributed come from. Consequently, he does not consider whether they come already tied to people who have entitlements over them (surely the case for service activities, which are people’s actions), people who therefore may decide for them- selves to whom they will give the thing and on what grounds.

The perspective that sees medical care as equivalent to getting a haircut, and denies that someone trained to save lives has any particular obligation to someone dying or severely injured, leaves me rather gobsmacked.

"society should make provision for the important needs of all of its members", and he does not agree with that?

Nozick appears to be rather fond of rhetorical questions. I’ll add a couple: Did the doctor train and equip herself, without society’s assistance? Or, if she was trained by others, did they train and equip themselves without society’s assistance?

Not that those questions are any more ponderable or illuminating than Nozick’s.

PVW said:

The perspective that sees medical care as equivalent to getting a haircut, and denies that someone trained to save lives has any particular obligation to someone dying or severely injured, leaves me rather gobsmacked.

While making distinctions whenever thinking about things comes with a risk of succumbing to inconsistencies and ad hoc misjudgments, I prefer it to disregarding, resisting or simply not grasping distinctions.

DaveSchmidt said:

While making distinctions whenever thinking about things comes with a risk of succumbing to inconsistencies and ad hoc misjudgments, I prefer it to disregarding, resisting or simply not grasping distinctions.

 It never occurred to me that the difference between getting a beard trim and an emergency appendectomy was a distinction one would have to work to grasp.

"They are casting their problems at society. And, you know, there's no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look after themselves first. It is our duty to look after ourselves and then, also, to look after our neighbours." - Margaret Thatcher (and every other deluded libertarian)

https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/rabbi_hillel_173085

https://slate.com/culture/2011/06/robert-nozick-father-of-libertarianism-even-he-gave-up-on-the-movement-he-inspired.html

I stalled out about 2/3 though. I'll eventually get back to finish it, but for now have moved on to other reading. One takeway I've been thinking of while reading the book, though, is how libertarian thought is very, very concerned about the state whereas I... really don't care. I'm as concerned as any libertarian is about freedom and tyranny, but the "state", to my mind, is just an implementation detail. Power structures inherently raise questions about freedom, responsibility, rights, and liberties, but power structures are inherent to all human organizations, and there's nothing particularly special about "states" here. Nozick goes to great lengths defining a minimal state, justifying this, and then arguing that nothing beyond this is justifiable, but even beyond the question of whether I agree with him or not I find that it just doesn't seem like the right set of questions to me.

In practice, I'd argue that even libertarians agree with this, claims to the contrary. Take a look at all the debates around "free speech" for instance. The vast majority of them don't involve the state at all -- Twitter's ban on Trump, for instance, or what Facebook choose to show or hide in the newsfeed. And yet, many libertarians have very strong opinions here. Yet Facebook, Twitter, etc, are in no ways a "state." What they are is concentrated accumulations of power -- and I'm all for criticizing the unrestricted exercise of large accumulations of power. Yet such a critique, to my mind, aims precisely at the heart of libertarian philosophy, doesn't it?

When libertarians criticize the "state", what I think they really have a problem with is scale. The modern, industrialized state is a very large, very concentrated accumulation of power. You could scale the state down to nearly nothing, but you'll still have enormous accumulations of power left, thanks to the material (and hence social) scale enabled by industrialization. When I think of states that, historically, have been much more "free," what they have in common is a) they are pre-industrial and b) private property is either non-existent or extremely limited in scope.