ABSTRACT
Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia are an "invisible hand" variant of a Lockean contractarian attempt to justify the State, or at least a minimal State confined to the functions of protection. Since Nozick's justification of existing States—provided they are or become minimal—rests on their alleged immaculate conception, and since no such State exists, then none of them can be justified, even if they should later become minimal. Nozick assumes that each protective agency would require that each of its clients renounce the right of private retaliation against aggression, by refusing to protect them against counter-retaliation. Nozick then proceeds to discuss disputes between clients of different protection agencies. The dominant agency, Nozick claims, has the right to bar "risky" activities engaged by independent. Nozick, waffling inconsistently between outlawing blackmail and permitting only a price that the blackmailer could have received from selling the information, has mired himself into an unsupportable concept of a "just price."
