David Gordon, fellow philosopher and close associate of Robert Nozick’s, added this comment to the latest Slate anti-libertarian article:

Nozick returned to a basically libertarian view in his last years. He told me that his position was very similar to that of F.A. Hayek. Metcalf’s understanding of the Wilt Chamberlain example is flawed. The example doesn’t assume that Chamberlain has negotiated with the team’s owner to receive part of the ticket price. To the contrary, those who want to see him play voluntarily pay 25 cents to do so. The point of the example is that to preserve a pattern of distribution—say equality—requires substantial interference with the free choices that people make from a distribution that according to the patterned theory itself is a just one. The example doesn’t at all depend on assuming perfectly competitive markets. Rather, it aims to show that patterns upset liberty.

Also, Keynes’s comment about ending up in Bedlam was about Hayek’s business cycle theory. It wasn’t a marginal comment on The Road to Serfdom but appeared in one of Keynes’s articles. Keynes wrote very favorably to Hayek about The Road to Serfdom.

The Best of Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.