Lecture 3 of Michael Sandel’s ever popular course on Justice is now online. Here’s the summary of material covered by the newly added lecture. It’s provided by Harvard’s course web site:
Part 1 -- FREE TO CHOOSE: With humorous references to Bill Gates and Michael Jordan, Sandel introduces the libertarian notion that redistributive taxation—taxing the rich to give to the poor—is akin to forced labor.
PART 2 -- WHO OWNS ME?: Students first discuss the arguments behind redistributive taxation. If you live in a society that has a system of progressive taxation, aren’t you obligated to pay your taxes? Don’t many rich people often acquire their wealth through sheer luck or family fortune? A group of students dubbed “Team Libertarian” volunteers to defend the libertarian philosophy against these objections.
In Lecture 3, on libertarianism, a lot of emphasis is placed on the premise that individuals own themselves. What does it mean? If they own themselves in the sense that they own property, then we’re born unequal because willy nilly we come into a world with such givens as brains, ambition, looks, and families that are wealthy or poor. If we truly own ourselves, some of us own a lot less than others.
In arguing for M. Jordan and Bill Gates’ right to keep what they have made, Sandel notes that Jordan has had help in achieving success from others — his team mates and his coach, eg., — so he may owe them something. A student objects that team mates and coach have already been paid. But nobody mentions the particular culture, the social arrangement, within which all individuals work, that provides the framework necessary for Jordan’s (or Gates’) success. Individuals aside, a social system exists on its own level and got along fairly well with Michael Jordan’s basketball and William Gates’ Microsoft, hard as that is to believe.