According to a recent NYTimes article, many children in America have been leaving poor households and angry parents to live out on the street. They have set up small communities, with the older ones fending for the younger ones, and they must scavenge and steal for food. In this short post, I will attempt to evaluate the justice of this situation entirely from the viewpoint of Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State, Utopia.
Difficult family situations resulting largely from poverty have caused life to be unbearable for these children, causing them to leave. According to Nozick we have no obligation to care for them from the standpoint of justice. Even though these children did not choose to be born into such families, anymore than a rich child chose to be born into a rich family, their situation is just; they simply have not acquired as much according to the theory of justice in acquisition.
In fact, the federally-funded outreach programs which have helped hundreds of thousands of homeless children are completely unjust, for the government takes taxes from citizens regardless of their willingness to pay and uses the money to help children who have run away from home. This is entirely unjust, akin to slavery, and should be stopped. In fact, because such an action is unjust, then by the principle of retribution, society must actually take away all of the money given to help these children (one can debate how to reacquire money gone into food which is already in the children's stomachs) and give it back to those from whom it was taxed. Only then can we achieve full justice.
1 comment:
How would you feel, or rather how would Nozick feel, about reacquiring the value of money lost to the feeding of these homeless children through resorting to cannibalism? What I mean by this, is that the rich people that have been "enslaved" due to the unjust taxes could reacquire their wealth by eating these poor children. By approaching this John Donne-like retribution, not only will the rich be satiated and satisfied, the streets will be swept of the children scavengers.
But maybe the wealthy do gain utility in aiding such aimless souls. Thus, cannibalism might perhaps just complicate the problem further?
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