Nozick devotes Part III of Anarchy, State, and Utopia to developing his conception of a “framework of utopias,” which would provide persons, qua rational agents, with the widest domain for the exercise of their agency. This ideal contemplates that people, freed from the shackles of state coercion, will create and live in a virtually unlimited number of distinct communities, each with rules and institutions that reflect its particular values. These would include highly illiberal ones.
Such an arrangement permits persons to choose the environment they believe offers them the greatest opportunity for personal growth and flourishing. In addition to preventing inter-community aggression, the minimum state would exist to safeguard the right of exit, when a particular community no longer meets an agent’s needs. Although there are a variety of perhaps insurmountable obstacles to implementation, it is a philosophically attractive ideal, which I have previously discussed.
However, one obvious objection to Nozick’s framework revolves around the potential mistreatment of minor children, specifically the possibility that parents in isolated communities grossly neglect their education.[1] Such deprivation would not only leave children completely uninformed about alternative available lifestyles, but totally unprepared to function outside their birth community, thereby robbing them of the very freedom this framework is intended to promote. Nozick clearly recognizes this dilemma when he observes: “In some way it must be ensured that they [young children] are informed of the range of alternatives in the world” (ASU, 330), but forthrightly admits that this is one of many details he is leaving unresolved.
So, Nozick’s comment invites the question “How is this to be accomplished?” One method is, of course, legislation. The minimal state, given that it enjoys by definition a monopoly of legitimate force, could simply require parents in all its otherwise self-governing communities to provide their offspring with at least a basic education. That is, one that leaves them verbally and mathematically literate and with some knowledge regarding other potential lifestyles.[2]
However, this “solution” may be improvident. Starting with first things, at least for libertarians, the coercion of innocent persons must be a last resort, employed only to prevent something close to a moral catastrophe. We rightly presume that parents have their children’s best interests at heart, and are properly treated as their default guardians until they become full rational agents. Therefore, there must be a very strong case to warrant the coercion of parents in matters of education.
Moreover, there are reasons to believe that such compulsion will rarely be needed. Notice initially, that for communities to survive over time they must meet the minimal material needs of their members, and this itself will necessitate that some skills are learned and transmitted to children. In a Nozickian utopia, one can acquire goods from others only by means of voluntary exchange. This in turn requires that members of insular communities make or earn something to trade for food, housing, transportation, medical care, and so on.
A community whose members can only offer unskilled labor in return for other goods will be likely be terribly impoverished and immiserated. For example, it would probably take hundreds of hours of manual labor to pay for a simple medical procedure or a day of hospitalization. This requirement will provide an urgent incentive for community members to obtain marketable skills and to pass them on to their children. Moreover, the process of exchanging goods and services with individuals from outside groups will almost surely be a source of information about the wider world.
A legislative approach to ensuring children receive an adequate education will involve creating and financing a bureaucratic agency that will set and enforce standards, all to address a “problem” that may be of at most trivial import. Thus, such laws might be unwarranted even under a utilitarian analysis.
In addition, it is not clear that it is possible to formulate a uniform standard that would be appropriate in light of the particular values and needs of all communities, families, and minor children. If this fear is well founded, any such legislation will impose unnecessary and burdensome obligations, thereby violating parental rights. Finally, the legislative strategy has the potential to politicize education, enabling the state to prescribe the “correct” view to be taught on a variety of contentious political, social, and ethical issues.
If state intervention on behalf of vulnerable children is required in Nozick’s meta-utopia, I believe it should be judicial, rather than legislative. That is, children who did not receive a minimally adequate education could, upon reaching adulthood, sue their parents (or the community’s leaders) for damages.[3] Not only would this create salutary incentives, but this policy has the advantage of limiting the state’s involvement to cases where an actual, concrete harm is alleged, and requires that the court or jury evaluate the parents’ educational decision-making in light of the particular circumstances of that child, family, and community.
Before concluding, I should say that the potential for childhood neglect is not a danger unique to the Nozickian utopia, because any political ideal will need to address it in some fashion. Obviously, non-libertarian versions of utopia will be far more tolerant of coercion and governmental interventions in education. However, we would do well to bear in mind that the state is quite capable of transforming a relatively trivial problem into a catastrophe.
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[1] This problem exists even in our current, highly interventionist state.
[2] At least some of our states impose curriculum and testing requirements on parents who elect to homeschool their children.
[3] It might even be desirable to permit those purporting to represent the child’s best interest—such as a non-parental relative–to bring such a suit, although this introduces complications not present in suits brought by the allegedly neglected child upon their reaching majority.
