QuestionsWhat is a just society?Wilt Chamberlain: liberty upsets every pattern of distribution
What is a just society?Liberties

Wilt Chamberlain: liberty upsets every pattern of distribution

The Wilt Chamberlain argument

Robert Nozick 1938 · 2002In his lectures he devised a case where one is responsible without having been able to do otherwise, before Frankfurt published his.
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What it claims

D2 is just, and no pattern of distribution can be maintained without permanently interfering with people's lives (hence with free acts).

Why

If a distribution is just, free people spending their share as they wish produce a new distribution that is just as well.

The same idea through history
John Locke1690Locke makes each person the owner of his own person and labour, hence of what he draws from it. Nozick takes up this idea of rights over oneself and one's holdings, which are first of all rights to dispose of them freely.
Robert Nozick1974In chapter 7 of his book, Nozick draws from it a "historical" theory of justice: a distribution is just if it was reached by just steps, whatever its outcome. The Wilt Chamberlain example is meant to show that no pattern of distribution survives liberty.
In short

"Wilt Chamberlain: liberty upsets every pattern of distribution" is an argument by Robert Nozick (Anarchy, State, and Utopia, 1974, ch. 7, 1974) on the question "What is a just society?" (answer: liberties). Its claim: D2 is just, and no pattern of distribution can be maintained without permanently interfering with people's lives (hence with free acts). According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P7). AskPhilosophy presents 3 objections, 1 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

Anarchy, State, and Utopia, 1974, ch. 7
Valid with an implicit premise

Many people think a just society is one where wealth is spread according to a pattern: equally, by merit, by need. Robert Nozick, a Harvard professor and opponent of John Rawls, sets a trap for these theories. Choose the distribution you find most just, he says. Now imagine that a basketball star, Wilt Chamberlain, signs a contract: 25 cents of every ticket goes to him. A million spectators pay willingly, because they want to see him play. At the end of the season Chamberlain is far richer than the others, and the distribution is no longer the one you chose. Has it become unjust? If so, why, since nobody was forced? Nozick concludes that how we get there matters more than the result, and that maintaining a pattern would mean forbidding free exchanges again and again.

P1Start from the distribution D1 that you consider just (equality, merit, needs, your choice). In D1, each person legitimately holds his share.
P2Being entitled to one's share, each person is entitled to dispose of it, hence to give it away or exchange it. A million people freely choose to give 25 cents to Chamberlain to watch him play.
P3After these exchanges, everyone else still has his legitimate share from D1: nothing was taken from them.
P4Whatever arises from a just situation by just steps is itself just.
P5The new distribution D2 is unequal: Chamberlain ends up with $250,000, more than anyone else. D2 is no longer the pattern you had chosen.
P6To maintain a pattern, one must permanently forbid such voluntary transfers, or permanently take back from some what others freely gave them.
P7 · implicit premiseIf Chamberlain's fortune changes the options or feelings of others (they may be envious, or have fewer choices), this is not a violation of their rights that would give a reason of justice to correct D2.
Therefore D2 is just, and no pattern of distribution can be maintained without permanently interfering with people's lives (hence with free acts).

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.
Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P7, the computer finds a world where exchanges are free and nobody loses his share, but where Chamberlain's fortune narrows the others' options so much that they have a complaint of justice: D2 would then not be just.
Valid with P7. P1 to P4 give: D2 is just, because it was reached from D1 by free exchanges that took nothing from others. P5 and P6 give the second half of the conclusion: if D2 departs from the pattern, restoring it requires forbidding or taking back. But the step from P3 to "the others have no complaint of justice" rests on P7: Nozick says it in a note (he sets envy aside, and admits that others' options may change), without arguing it at length. This is where critics strike, together with P4 (justice depends only on history).
Analogy. A class where everyone is handed the same pocket money. In the evening, pupils each give one euro to a classmate who plays guitar in the yard. The next day the amounts are no longer equal. For Nozick, the pockets would have to be searched every evening to restore equality, and that would stop pupils from doing what they want with their money.

Objections

3

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

John Rawls 1971 · attacks premise 4

The principles of justice apply first to the basic structure of society (property, contracts, taxes, inheritance), not to each exchange taken alone. Even if each exchange is free, millions of exchanges end up distorting the starting distribution: without institutions that correct it permanently, background justice is lost. "Just steps" are therefore not enough: the framework must stay just too.

Nozick replies
see the argument
Nozick Nozick, in a note of the chapter (1974, he knows Rawls)
Nozick accepts an element of pure procedural justice, in its proper place: background institutions are acceptable if they are themselves the result of voluntary actions. Otherwise, the constraints they impose need to be justified. His argument assumes, he says, no institution more extensive than the minimal state.
Where the debate stands (our summary)The basic disagreement is about background institutions: for Rawls the basic structure is the first subject of justice, and it may correct the distribution; for Nozick an institution that does not result from voluntary choices must justify itself, and permanent correction is exactly what he rejects. Neither has answered the other on this precise point (our summary).
G
Gerald A. Cohen 1977 · attacks premise 6

Forbidding capitalist acts between consenting adults limits liberty, but no more than Nozick's own property regime does: all private property forbids everyone else to use what belongs to someone. Maintaining a pattern does not sacrifice liberty to something else: it distributes liberties differently. Those who own almost nothing are deprived of many possible actions.

no reply
We have not yet found a direct reply by Nozick in the texts.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Point left open: no widely accepted answer is found. The basic disagreement is about the meaning of "liberty": absence of interference with one's acts (Nozick), or real ability to act, which depends on resources (Cohen). Our summary.
Thomas Nagel 1975 · attacks premise 2

Nozick treats rights of property and free disposal as absolute constraints, but gives them no foundation. Yet the idea that people own themselves does not prove that they have an absolute right over the world's resources, nor that this right outweighs others' needs. The example therefore assumes what it was meant to establish.

no reply
We have not yet found a direct reply by Nozick in the texts.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Open point. Libertarians generally answer that rights over oneself are the starting point of the theory, not its conclusion; their critics judge that this starting point has not been shown. Our summary.