Nozick and Reparations

I said I was going to talk about Nozick yesterday, and this isn't quite the post that I had intended, for various reasons. However, it's a start, and something that I've been meaning to address for a while now.

So, Nozick wants to dismantle the social contract (and part of this not being the post I had hoped for is not having a page reference from Anarchy, State, and Utopia for that). 

He's interested in negative rights, which is to say, the limits that other people's claims can have on the individual. (Again, a lot more to say there, but not today). 

Three particular things that Nozick is interested in terms of property rights (because what other kinds of rights would we be interested in, after all?). He describes them as "Original Acquisition of Holdings," "Transfers of Holdings," and "Rectification of Injustice in Holdings." The idea here is that, if you obtained something legally (your original acquisition), then it's yours: no one can take it from you (particularly the government, in the form of taxes). If you have something, you can sell it legally (the transfer of holdings). Note here, if you buy stolen property, you're out of luck: if the original acquisition somehow went wrong, then the transfer of holdings doesn't hold. You're not permitted to buy or sell things that don't have a "clean" original acquisition. We need to enforce property rights!

Finally, Nozick recognizes that there needs to be something to "rectify" any problems that come along, i.e., the property transferred back to the rightful owner. And he also recognizes that, in some cases, simply giving back the thing itself will be insufficient, because there will be other costs involved. If your grandpa stole $100 from my grandpa after the war - let's say in 1948 - then you don't merely owe me the original $100, because that's now worth approximately $1000 today  (and that's setting aside interest, etc). Note that you're assumed to have benefited from your grandpa's theft, and therefore are liable for his debts. All in the name of preserving property rights!

Here's the thing: what happens if we apply this to, for instance, the Cherokee Nation? What happens when we apply to the descendants of African slaves? Fill in the blank yourself: in what ways has "original acquisition" gone wrong? Are you really willing to defend "Manifest Destiny" (and who knows, maybe you are, but you can't do it using Nozick). 

If the holdings weren't acquired justly, then they can't be transferred justly. If something has gone wrong, there ought to be a rectification of injustice. What might that even look like?

(After writing this, I decided to Google "Nozick and Reparations," and came up with this post by Matt Bruenig, which is worth reading if you found my blog post interesting.)