A basketball star can make your fair society unfair by Tuesday
Robert Nozick's favorite argument against redistributing wealth doesn't involve theft, force, or even disagreement, just people spending their own money.
Start anywhere you like. Imagine your ideal distribution of wealth: perfectly equal, or split by need, or however you think is just. Call it fair. Now Wilt Chamberlain, the era's most electric basketball player, signs a contract: twenty-five cents from every ticket sold goes straight to him. A million fans show up over the season, each happily handing over their quarter to watch him play.
Chamberlain now has $250,000 more than anyone else. Nobody was robbed. Nobody broke a rule. Every fan spent money they were entitled to spend, on something they wanted. So is the new, unequal outcome unjust?
Robert Nozick used this scenario in Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974) to make a sharp claim: any fixed distribution, however fair it looks on day one, gets scrambled the moment free people start trading. Preserving the pattern would mean constantly reaching into pockets to undo choices people were allowed to make.
Liberty, in his account, isn't the opposite of justice. It's what justice has to survive.