Wilt Chamberlain's Basketball Earnings Analysis

Should the state enforce a limit to Wilt Chamberlain's basketball earnings through taxation?

In this essay I am going to argue that the state should enforce a limit on Wilt Chamberlain’s earnings through taxation. I will use the ideas of Fried and the idea of a paradox in Nozick’s thinking to prove this. Nozick believes that people have a right to the things they own and no one else can take it from them and the only way they can be taken is through the theory of just transfer, this being:

A person who acquires a holding in accordance with the principle of justice in accusation is entitled to that holding

A person who acquires a holding in accordance with the principle of justice in transfer, from someone else entitled to the holding, is entitled to the holding

No one is entitled to a holding except by (repeated) applications of 1 and 2

This means no one, not even the state, has a right to peoples belongings. He does however argue that there needs to be a protective state that will be provided through a

To answer this paradox we must look into the Harm Principle. There are two types of Harm Principle; Private (restrictions on someones liberty to prevent harm to others) and Public (justifying coercion on the grounds that it is necessary to stop harm to public interests). Out of these two types Nozick rejects the Public Harm Principle making it into a paradox. Sampson would argue that he should include the Public Harm Principle as not having protection may encourage violence but not having health services, for example, would not have the same affects and would not actually cause harm. This means that even with both Harm Principles in place it could be fair to still apply Nozicks minimal state. However under Nozicks argument the criticism could still stand because of, arguably his main mistake, him making the paradox for