progressivism, individualism, and the public ... - Telmarc Group

The Telmarc Group
PROGRESSIVISM, INDIVIDUALISM, AND THE PUBLIC
INTELLECTUAL
Thus one could argues that for Nozick the rights extend to one's own life, unencumbered
right to one's own life, and if so, one then has the ability to chose when to end it.
Furthermore the rights raises an issue as to whom they extend. Do rights extend to
citizens, those who have agreed to be in the community, are aliens disenfranchised of
rights, or is it that they never had them in the first place. Cane the rights be delimited
even amongst citizens. For example in the US, I have a right as a natural born citizen to
run for president, is that delimitation to only natural born a delimitation of a right. Then
at what point in the process of existing do I become eligible for rights, at conception, or
do we define that point. We have had persons with rights withdrawn, prisoners, slaves,
traitors, and a variety of others for various reasons from time to time they have had rights
not available. For example if we were to institute a guest worker program do we then
confer rights, the same rights?
5.4.3 Critique of Distributive Justice
Nozick, in simplistic terms, creates three constructs for distribution. They are simplified
as follows:
1. Entitlement: One through their own efforts, Lockean work for example, gains title or
ownership to property, and then has the entitlement to do with what he so wishes.
2.Patterned: The society determines a set of metrics as to how to distribute the things
which are distributable. For example one may decide to distribute according to height,
inversely according to weight, according to the length of the big toe, or whatever. This is
typical of a pure socialist or communist society where the goods go to those needing
them the most and are taking from those who have excess. It begs the question of need
and excess but alas that has always been the quandary. Patterned distribution is also a
centralized form requiring hopefully a benevolent central distributor or controller.
3. Un-patterned is distribution according to some random or capricious manner. Gifts
from parents to children, charity, government graft, and the like. There is no rule, no
basis of entitlement.
These are the three main ways Nozick sees in redistributing things in a society. The
Rawlsian approach is patterned but "behind the curtain" ensuring distributional equity.
5.4.3.1 Entitlement Theory
Entitlement theory makes the assumption that in some way an initial acquisition is
entitled by some principle of justice. Thus in a Lockean sense if there was unclaimed
land, say in New Jersey, in 1620, If I were to then clear the land, plan crops, file a claim
at a court house, does that create an initial claim, because I worked and the work is
converted to ownership. What of the Leni Lenape who hunted the land before I arrived,
did they have claim to the land? If so does my claim now have to be a transfer claim
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