Robert Nozick’s classic of political philosophy Anarchy, State, and Utopia turns fifty this year. His blasting of the redistribution of wealth shook academia to its core in 1974, and its intellectual tremors are arguably still being felt to this day. Nevertheless, Nozick’s arguments are clearly lost in the “real world”; high taxes and high benefits still run amuck. Indeed, even in the heyday of neoliberalism—the 1980s—Margaret Thatcher often justified her tax cuts on the basis that they advantaged the poorest in society. Did Nozick get it right in advocating for libertarianism, or did John Rawls really come to the correct conclusion in defending the social democracy that most states now embody? Little has not been written in the scholarly dispute; yet Nozick’s case remains close to totally

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