Amia Srinivasan has four Questions for free-market moralists, specifically those who accept something like a Nozickian account of individual rights. I believe that she makes Nozick's system an all-or-nothing concept while ignoring problems with Rawls, and further misunderstands Nozick's work as describing the whole of morality rather than the operation of the state alone. Her article shows a concerning lack of faith in people to care for each other outside the confines of the state, and an overly optimistic belief in the power of the state to do the same.
Srinivasan says that in order to be a consistent defender of Robert Nozick, the free market and classical liberalism, we must answer yes to all four questions that she proposes, She believes…show more content… Despite the presumption of both Srinivasan and the defenders of inequality she cites, a moral defense of voluntary exchange can’t be used to defend many of the inequalities we see in the world today. As Srinivasan herself has noted elsewhere, the wealthy are considerably more dependent on government than the rest of us. This makes sense, given that they’re the ones most likely to have significant influence over public policy. If Srinivasan agrees with what seems like the logical conclusion of her earlier column about the rich and government dependency, it seems like the logical conclusion is that government usually works to strengthen existing inequalities. If that’s true, the drive toward freedom in that broader sense is an argument for free markets, not against them. Srinivasan’s second statement is not really speaking about morality, it is instead talking about legality that's simply based on a certain morality. How the statement should be read based on Nozick’s view, would be that the state has no moral foundation to question free exchanges. The situation above is unpleasant to most, but does this mean should it be prohibited by
