Justice as Entitlement
In this lecture…
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Libertarianism
Nozick vs. Rawls
Property rights
The labor theory of property
The Lockean proviso
The entitlement theory of justice
History and pattern
Liberty upsets patterns
Taxation and redistribution
Criticisms
Libertarianism
 Libertarianism starts from the thought
that, as far as possible, government should
be kept out of individual lives.
 Government should not tell people what
they can and cannot do, as long as they
respect the rights of others.
Libertarianism
 In particular, libertarianism opposes
coercive forms of redistribution of wealth
and income.
 Libertarians argue that it is illegitimate for
the state (government) to seize the wealth
of some and present it to others.
Libertarianism
 Robert Nozick’s libertarianism starts from
the fundamental premise that individuals
have equal natural rights against force,
theft and fraud.
 These individual rights, Nozick argues,
permit only a ‘minimal state’, i.e. one
whose power should be limited to the
protection of people’s existing rights.
Libertarianism
 Notably, all individuals are entitled to the
right to private ownership of property,
which includes the rights to possess, use,
exchange, and gain income from trades of
property in a market, without government
interference, regulation or taxation.
Libertarianism
 Libertarians champion the idea of ‘selfownership’. They claim that individuals
own themselves – their bodies, talents and
abilities, labor, and by extension the fruits
or products resulting from exercising their
talents, abilities and labor.
Libertarianism
 Justice, Nozick argues, is about respecting
people’s rights, in particular, their rights
to self-ownership and their rights to
property.
 People must be allowed the freedom to
decide what they want to do with what
they own.
Nozick vs. Rawls
 Rawls’ influential book A Theory of Justice
(1971) is a systematic defense of
egalitarianism and the welfare state,
whereas Nozick’s Anarchy, State, and
Utopia (1974) is a compelling defense of
free-market libertarianism.
Nozick vs. Rawls
 Rawls’ theory of justice requires equal
basic liberties, political equality, equal
opportunities, and redistribution of
income and wealth from the rich to the
poor, all of which, he argues, are necessary
to maximize the position of the least
advantaged members of society.
Nozick vs. Rawls
 Nozick criticizes the idea of redistribution
inherent in Rawls’ proposals.
 Nozick claims that inequality of wealth
and income is not unjust if it is the result
of legitimate acquisition and voluntary
transactions of private property.
Nozick vs. Rawls
 Nozick notes that Rawls does not include
property rights among the liberties
protected by his first principle (the
principle of equal liberty).
 Nozick objects that Rawls treats wealth as
if it belongs to society, to share out, rather
than to its producers, in proportion to
their productive contributions.
Nozick vs. Rawls
 Government, in Rawls’ view, must engage
in redistributive taxation in order to
ensure a fair distribution of wealth and
resources among its citizens.
 Nozick, on the other hand, argues against
redistribution through taxation and social
welfare.
Nozick vs. Rawls
 Nozick criticizes Rawls’ conception of
justice because in order to put Rawls’ ideas
into practice, government has to meddle
continually with citizens’ existing
property rights and voluntary exchange in
the free market.
Nozick vs. Rawls
 For Nozick, the only sort of government
that can be morally justified is what he
calls a minimal or ‘night-watchman’ state,
that is, a government which protects
individuals, via police and military forces,
from force, fraud, and theft, and
administers courts of law, but does
nothing else.
Property rights
 Nozick maintains that wealth and
resources should never be collected
together and then reallocated by a central
distributor (i.e. state or government).
 In a free market economy, there is no
central distributor – no one should be
given the right or power to control all the
wealth and resources and decide how they
are to be distributed.
Property rights
 For Nozick, to respect people’s liberty
means that there should be no restrictions
on individual property holdings (i.e.
property ownership).
 Limiting how much property people can
possess, and what they can do with it, is
unjust because doing so reduces
individual liberty.
Property rights
 Nozick thinks that private property rights
are fundamental in the sense that they are
derived from ‘self-ownership’.
 A person has a right to what they produce,
because they own their own labor, which
they invest in creating wealth.
Property rights
 Each individual owns himself or herself
and the property he or she has acquired in
the right way (i.e. he or she has not done
anything illegal to acquire it).
 Property owners have no moral obligation
to share their property with anyone else.
Property rights
 If someone attempts to take property from
its legitimate owner, the owner has the
right to resist this attempt with all the
force that is necessary to defend his
property.
Property rights
 According to Nozick, force may
permissibly be used to take something
back from someone who has acquired it
via illegitimate means (through fraud or
theft, for instance), but it is always unjust
to force someone to give up something
that he or she rightfully owns.
Property rights
 Nozick argues that the most important
function of the minimal state is to protect
people’s existing rights (liberty, selfownership and property rights).
 But it is morally impermissible for the
state or government to force individuals to
give up their private property (through
levying taxes on them, for example).
The labor theory of property
 Consider a piece of paper. It is made from
wood. The trees from which that wood
came might have been deliberately
planted as a crop, but those saplings came
from seeds, and those seeds were
descended from trees which once
belonged to no one.
The labor theory of property
 Thus at some point an object, be it tree or
seed, which belonged to no one became
someone’s private property. How could
that be?
The labor theory of property
 The question is even more pressing in the
case of land. Anyone may use unowned
land. As soon as it becomes private
property, however, no one may use it
without the permission of the owner.
 How can someone come to have the right
to exclude others from using what used to
be a common resource?
The labor theory of property
 John Locke, the seventeenth century
English philosopher, proposed that
initially the world was owned in common
by all human beings.
 How, then, could anyone come to own
anything as individual private property?
The labor theory of property
 According to Locke, a person has a
property in himself and in his labor. Each
person has liberty to decide what he wants
to do (subject to the rights of others), and
a right to reap the rewards of his own
labor.
The labor theory of property
 Locke’s theory of property holds that a
person (being a self-owner) owns his
labor. By ‘mixing his labor’ with a
previously unowned part of the natural
world, he comes to own this natural
resource.
The labor theory of property
 In other words, an individual owns his
labor and in laboring on an object he
‘mixes his labor’ with that object.
 So long as that object is not already justly
claimed by another person, he comes to
own that object on which he has labored.
The labor theory of property
 For Locke, a person can ‘appropriate’ an
unowned natural resource – originally
common property – and claim that the
resource is now his own private property
by mixing his labor with it.
The labor theory of property
 For Locke, certain conditions must be
satisfied for just appropriation of an
unowned natural resource as one’s private
property; namely, a person must:
1. mix his labor with it
2. not allow anything to go to waste
3. leave enough for others
The labor theory of property
 Nozick notices that there is a problem
with Locke’s argument: the premise that
mixing your labor with land entitles you to
the land cannot be morally justified.
The labor theory of property
 Nozick provides a counterexample:
 “If I own a can of tomato juice and spill it in
the sea so that its molecules mingle evenly
throughout the sea, do I thereby come to
own the sea, or have I foolishly dissipated
my tomato juice?”
The labor theory of property
 It can be argued, however, that mixing
labor is not the same as mixing tomato
juice.
 In laboring on land one massively
increases its value. This can be a reason
why laboring entitles the laboror to
appropriate cultivated land.
The labor theory of property
 But this argument too has an obvious
difficulty. The laboror may have the right
to keep the ‘added value’ (i.e. the fruit of
his labor) but not the land itself.
 The land is not part of the added value; it
was there before the laboror came to work
on it.
The labor theory of property
 If land is scarce then all of it would have
been taken by those first to stake their
claim by labor.
 Those born to a later generation, unable to
find land of their own, may complain that
they have been unjustly treated in
comparison with those who have inherited
land.
The labor theory of property
 Before a natural resource comes to be
appropriated by an individual, everyone is
at liberty to use it.
 Once it becomes an individual’s property,
this liberty of non-owners is canceled.
Others cannot use it without the owner’s
permission.
The labor theory of property
 Why should anything I do to an object
overturn your previous liberty to use it?
 It is very hard to find an answer; thus it is
very hard to find a satisfactory principle of
justice in acquisition (i.e. just
appropriation of natural resources as
private property).
The Lockean proviso
 Nozick uses as a starting point Locke’s
approach to justice in property
acquisition – namely, that ownership of an
object originates in one’s mixing of labor
with that object.
 He then draws attention to some
difficulties in Locke’s labor theory of
property.
The Lockean proviso
 Why does mixing one’s labor with
something make one the owner of it?
 Why should one’s entitlement (ownership)
extend to the whole object rather than just
the added value one’s labor has produced?
The Lockean proviso
 Nozick notices that Locke imposed, as a
condition on appropriation of a natural
resource, that ‘enough and as good’ should
be left for others.
 The ‘Lockean proviso’: Natural resources,
such as land, come to be rightfully owned
by the first person to appropriate it, as
long as he has left ‘enough and as good’ for
others.
The Lockean proviso
 Nozick reinterprets the Lockean proviso as
requiring that no individual should be
made worse off by the appropriation of a
natural resource.
 The ‘Nozickean proviso’: Acquisition is just
so long as no one’s condition is worsened
by someone’s appropriation of a natural
resource.
The Lockean proviso
 In other words, individuals may justly
appropriate a natural resource that is not
owned by anyone if doing so does not have
any bad consequences for others.
 The Nozickean proviso expresses the idea
that one’s natural rights to property
extend only as far as exercising them does
not harm others.
The Lockean proviso
 Once an item is owned, others cannot use
it without the permission of the owner.
 However, because having exclusive rights
over a natural resource might motivate its
owner to improve it, which might in turn
benefit others in various ways. Thus, the
advantages of private property ownership
may outweigh its disadvantages.
The Lockean proviso
 Counterexample: Person X can satisfy
Nozick’s proviso by ‘appropriating’ a beach
and charging $1 admission to those who
previously were able to use the beach for
free, so long as Person X compensates
them with a benefit they deem equally
valuable, such as a clean up or lifeguarding service on the beach…
The Lockean proviso
 …However, the beach-goers would have
been even better off if the beach had been
appropriated or acquired by a more
efficient organizer, Person Y, who would
have only charged 50 cents for the same
service. But this alternative is never
considered under Nozick's proviso.
The entitlement theory of justice
 For Nozick, an ‘entitlement’ (property
ownership) is a just holding (possession),
and a just holding can come about in
either of the two following ways: [1] direct
acquisition by the holder, or [2] transfer
from some other person or persons
through voluntary exchange or gift.
The entitlement theory of justice
 Nozick defends what he calls a theory of
entitlement (or property rights) according
to which all holdings which have been
acquired in a justifiable manner, or gained
through voluntary exchange with those
who acquired their holdings in a
justifiable manner, are just.
The entitlement theory of justice
 Nozick’s entitlement theory is concerned
with ‘justice in holdings’.
 It is formulated to assess the holdings of
any given person at any given time to
determine whether they are justly
possessed by that person.
The entitlement theory of justice
 For Nozick, there are three major topic
areas of justice:
1. original acquisition of holdings
2. transfer of holdings
3. the rectification of injustice in holdings
The entitlement theory of justice
 Accordingly, Nozick’s entitlement theory
consists of 3 propositions:
a. A person who acquires a holding in
accordance with the principle of justice in
acquisition is entitled to that holding.
The entitlement theory of justice
b. 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.
c. No one is entitled to a holding except by
(repeated) applications of [a] and [b].
The entitlement theory of justice
 The first proposition [a] is an account of
justice in initial acquisition, which
explains how anyone can be the first
owner of property.
 The first claimant is entitled to a holding
provided that no one would be made
worse off by the acquisition of it (i.e. the
Nozickean proviso).
The entitlement theory of justice
 The second proposition [b] is a principle
of justice in transfer, which explains how
property may pass from one legitimate
owner to another.
 The owner has the right to give property
away as a gift or in exchange for something
else as he or she sees fit. By contrast, theft,
fraud or breach of contract violates the
principle of transfer.
The entitlement theory of justice
 The final proposition [c] would be a
principle of justice in rectification,
governing the proper means of setting
right past injustices in acquisition and
transfer.
 It would require, for example, that stolen
goods be returned to the legitimate owner.
The entitlement theory of justice
 Not all holdings are just entitlements: a
holding can be acquired unjustly, by theft
or fraud, for example.
 A person is entitled to a holding only if it
has been justly acquired or justly
transferred. If a holding has arisen from a
past injustice, it is just to ‘rectify’ it.
The entitlement theory of justice
 To sum up: Nozick’s entitlement theory of
justice asserts that anyone who owns
property in a manner consistent with the
three principles (justice in acquisition,
justice in transfer, and justice in
rectification) is justly entitled to it.
The entitlement theory of justice
 A distribution of wealth in a society as a
whole is a just distribution if everyone in
that society is entitled to what he or she
has, i.e. has gotten his or her holdings in
accordance with the principles of
acquisition, transfer, and rectification.
 It is just no matter how equal or unequal it
happens to be.
History and pattern
 According to Nozick, there are 3 kinds of
principles of justice:
1. historical principles of justice
2. end-state principles of justice
3. patterned principles of justice
 Nozick’s principles are ‘historical’ yet
‘unpatterned.’ He rejects all other
principles of justice.
History and pattern
 Nozick advocates a ‘historical’ conception
of justice: “The entitlement theory of
justice in distribution is historical;
whether a distribution is just depends
upon how it came about.”
History and pattern
 Nozick distinguishes what he calls
‘historical’ and ‘end-state’ (non-historical)
theories of justice.
 An end-state theory of justice supposes
that we can determine whether a
distribution is just without considering
how people acquire their wealth or
resources.
History and pattern
 A historical theory, on the other hand,
supposes that to determine whether a
distribution is just, we need to take into
consideration how people came to possess
their wealth and resources.
History and pattern
 For Nozick, justice is historical in the
sense that a just distribution of resources
is simply the result of people’s exercising
their freedom of choice with respect to
investment, consumption and giving.
History and pattern
 Patterned theories of justice say that just
distribution should be the result of
conforming to some pattern (or principle)
such as ‘an equal share for everyone’ or ‘to
each according to his need.’
 John Rawls’ difference principle, for
example, can be regarded as a ‘patterned’
principle of justice.
History and pattern
 Nozick’s entitlement theory of justice is
historical yet unpatterned: the justice of a
distribution is determined by certain
historical circumstances (contrary to endstate theories), but it has nothing to do
with fitting any pattern.
History and pattern
 For Nozick, a particular distributive
pattern is not required for justice.
 The free market is just, not as a means to
some pattern, but insofar as the
transactions permitted in the market
satisfy the conditions of just (voluntary)
exchange.
History and pattern
 According to Nozick’s entitlement theory,
a distribution is just (i.e. everyone is
rightfully entitled to his or her holdings) if
and only if everyone’s private property is
owned through a sequence of transactions
in accordance with the principles of just
acquisition and just transfer.
History and pattern
 Whether a distribution is just depends on
how it came about. If it came about in
accordance with the rules of acquisition,
transfer and rectification, then it is not
unjust, however unequal it may be.
History and pattern
 In short, Nozick’s entitlement theory of
justice is historical yet unpatterned. All
other theories of justice are either nonhistorical or patterned and therefore must
be rejected.
Liberty upsets pattern
 Nozick points out that if a patterned
distribution were established at any given
moment, it would of necessity be
destroyed if individuals could freely (and
hence unpredictably) transfer some of
their holdings to others by means of
purchases, gifts, loans, etc.
Liberty upsets pattern
 To maintain a patterned distribution,
government would have to ban certain
transactions in the free market, or
constantly intervene in the market to
redistribute property. Either way, a pattern
can only be enforced at the expense of
individual rights and liberties.
Liberty upsets pattern
 Imagine a society in which the
distribution of wealth fits a particular
pattern. Suppose, for simplicity’s sake,
that it is an equal distribution (everyone
gets an equal share of income). Let us call
it D1.
Liberty upsets pattern
 Among the members of this society is Wilt
Chamberlain, a famous basketball player.
Knowing his popularity with spectators,
Chamberlain signs up for a team in a
contract stipulating that for each game
played at the home ground he is to receive
twenty-five cents from the price of every
ticket sold.
Liberty upsets pattern
 Suppose further that over the course of the
season, one million fans decide to pay the
twenty-five cents to watch him play. The
result will be a new distribution, D2, in
which Chamberlain now has earned
$250,000, much more than anyone else – a
distribution which thereby breaks the
original pattern established in D1.
Liberty upsets pattern
 Is the new distribution D2 just? Nozick’s
answer is ‘Yes’. Why? Because everyone
who gave up twenty-five cents in the
transition from D1 to D2 did so voluntarily,
and thus has no grounds for complaint;
and those who did not want to pay to see
Chamberlain play still have their twentyfive cents, so they have no grounds for
complaint either.
Liberty upsets pattern
 If D1 is just, and people voluntarily moved
from D1 to D2, then, Nozick argues, surely
D2 is also just.
 But once we have conceded this, then we
have admitted that there can be just
distributions which do not conform to the
original pattern. So all patterned
conceptions of justice must be rejected.
Liberty upsets pattern
 The Wilt Chamberlain example shows that
a distribution (such as D2) can be just even
if it does not follow a particular pattern.
 Free choice of action is essential to justice,
and such freedom will always upset any
patterned principle of distributive justice.
Liberty upsets pattern
 Nozick argues that any attempt to impose
a pattern of holdings will violate
individual liberty.
 In order to preserve a pattern, it would be
necessary to either prohibit people from
making pattern-breaking transactions, or
forcibly redistribute property on a regular
basis (to restore the original pattern).
Taxation and redistribution
 In Nozick’s view, taxation is equivalent to
forced labor.
 Taxing earnings is, in effect, forcing
taxpayers to work unpaid. To take the fruit
of one person’s labor for the benefit of
another is effectively to make one person
work for another against his will.
Taxation and redistribution
 Taking a proportion of people’s earnings is
like making them spend a proportion of
their time working for the benefit of
others.
 Taxation by the state for the provision of
social welfare – a forced transfer – is
therefore unjust.
Taxation and redistribution
 Each individual possesses inviolable
rights that all others, including the state,
must respect. To take property away from
people in order to redistribute it violates
their private property rights.
Taxation and redistribution
 The functions of Nozick’s ideal ‘minimal
state’ are limited to the protection against
force, theft, fraud, and the enforcement of
contracts.
 Redistributive taxation violates people’s
property rights, and therefore must be
rejected.
Criticisms
 Nozick’s position rests on the claim that
property rights are in some way absolute.
 His theory of entitlement appears to rest
on the dubious assumption that rights of
self-ownership can be extended to include
rights over natural resources.
Criticisms
 One might agree with Nozick that a person
has the right to decide what should
happen to his or her own self, but at the
same time refuses to extend this reasoning
to claims over natural resources.
Criticisms
 Nozick himself ultimately acknowledges
that his entitlement theory is inadequate,
since it can never be demonstrated that
existing holdings actually result from an
unbroken series of voluntary transfers.
Criticisms
 History shows that a great deal of initial
acquisition of property was unjust, based
on theft, exploitation, slavery and
colonization.
 All property that derives from unjust
acquisition is unjustly held.
Criticisms
 It is exceedingly difficult, if not impossible,
to rectify the injustice of the past. We
often have no way of establishing what
rightfully belongs to whom.
 So Nozick’s theory has no application
unless we could map out the history of
every property ownership and transfer
from the very beginning down to the
present.
Criticisms
 Another objection to Nozick’s view is that
taxation is not the same as forcing
taxpayers to work unpaid for the needy.
 Forced unpaid labor would violate the
right to freedom of occupation, but
taxation of earnings is compatible with
that right.
Criticisms
 A further reason why Nozick’s theory is
controversial is that it could justify very
unequal distributions of property.
 It can be argued, for example, that
economic inequality is likely to produce
unequal political influence, which
undermines democracy.
Criticisms
 Nozick claims that whatever distribution
resulting from voluntary transactions is
just, no matter how unequal it is.
 However, voluntary transactions over time
produce inequalities that are unjust. For
example, economic inequalities produce
inequalities of opportunity for children
from different family backgrounds.
Criticisms
 Supporters of the welfare state would
argue that property must be redistributed
from the wealthy to the less fortunate to
ensure equal liberty for all.
 By increasing the income of the poor,
redistribution allows them to have a wider
range of choices that they would not
otherwise have.