Minimalstaat

In his famous work, Anarchy, State, and Utopia, the political philosopher Robert Nozick justified a minimal state. The state should be constrained to guarantee individual rights. Due to the entitlement theory of justice, any distribution of holdings is supposed to be justified if no coercive violation of natural rights has taken place during the initial acquisition of previously unowned things and subsequent transfers. Unjust transactions of the past have to be corrected. Bodo Knoll compares Nozick's arguments with alternative libertarian theories of the state. A reconstruction from an economic point of view shows several links to economic concepts and theories. In addition, the author criticizes the entitlement theory of justice and the justification of the minimal state from an economic and a philosophical perspective.