Justice as Entitlement

Justice as Entitlement

In this lecture… 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 advocate the minimal state and argue that it is illegitimate for the state (government) to seize the money 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 moral rights, Nozick argues, permit only a minimal state, that is, one limited to protection of those rights.

Libertarianism Notably, these rights include 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 interference, regulation or taxation.

Libertarianism Libertarians champion the idea of ‘self-ownership.’ 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 The state or 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 To put Rawls’ ideas into practice, one must override already existing property rights. Nozick concludes that a conception of justice like Rawls’ requires an exceedingly interventionist government that continually meddles with voluntary exchange and free agreement among citizens.

Nozick vs. Rawls The only sort of state that can be morally justified is what Nozick 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 thinks that the very idea of ‘distributive justice,’ or a just redistribution of goods, is misleading because it implies that an existing state of property holdings (i.e. property ownership) is the result of a deliberate or planned distribution by state authority.

Property rights Nozick maintains that resources are not, and should never be, collected into a sum total to be allocated by a central distributing authority. In a free market economy, there is no central distributor – no person or group has the right or power to control all the 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. 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. Property owners have no moral obligation to share their property with those who need it.

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 (or limited government) is to protect people’s rights (liberty, self-ownership and property rights). But it is morally impermissible for the state to uses taxation to force individuals to give up their private property.

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.

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?

This 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 common resources?

John Locke assumes that initially the world was owned in common by all human beings. How, then, could anyone come to own anything as individual private 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 benefits of his own actions.

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 it.

In other words, an individual owns his labor and in laboring on an object he ‘mixes his labor’ with that object. Thereby, so long as that object is not already justly claimed by another person, he comes to own that object on which he has labored.

By extension of the idea of self-ownership Locke thinks that a person who mixes his labor with a natural resource – originally common property – can legitimately claim that the resource is now his own private 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: mix his labor with it not allow anything to go to waste leave enough for others

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.

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?”

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.

But this argument too has an obvious difficulty. The laboror may have the right to keep the added value 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.

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.

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.

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 The principle of justice in acquisition is meant to govern the gaining of exclusive property rights over material objects. But, as we have seen, it is not clear why the first people to acquire (i.e. to claim ownership of) some part of the material world should be able to exclude others from using it.

The Lockean proviso Nozick notices that Locke imposed, as a condition on appropriation, that ‘enough and as good’ 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 left ‘enough and as good’ for others.

The Lockean proviso Nozick reinterprets the Lockean proviso as requiring that no individual 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 items that are not owned by others if doing so does not harm others in comparison with their position had the item in question remained unowned. 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 have rights to use it only with 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. Therefore, property rights might not worsen the position of others.

The Lockean proviso Counterexample: Person X can satisfy Nozick’s proviso by ‘acquiring’ 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 life-guarding service on the beach…

The Lockean proviso …However, the beach-goers would have been even better off if the beach had been 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.

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.

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.

For Nozick, there are three major topic areas of justice: original acquisition of holdings transfer of holdings the rectification of injustice in holdings

Accordingly, Nozick’s entitlement theory consists of 3 propositions: A person who acquires a holding in accordance with the principle of justice in acquisition 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 [a] and [b].

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 should be rendered worse off by the acquisition.

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 as he or she sees fit. By contrast, theft, fraud or breach of contract violates the principle of transfer.

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.

Not all holdings are just entitlements: a holding can be acquired unjustly, by theft or fraud, for example, or by forcible seizure contrary to the wishes of the original owner. 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.

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.

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: historical principles of justice end-state principles of justice 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 such as ‘everyone gets an equal share’ or ‘to each according to his need.’ 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 end-state 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 In Nozick’s view, any distribution is just as long as property was acquired either through a proper initial acquisition (when one mixed his labor with it) or through a just transfer (as when one buys, trades for, or is given something from its legitimate owner).

History and pattern According to Nozick’s entitlement theory, a distribution is just (i.e. everyone is 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 non-historical 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.

Patterns, Nozick argues, can only be enforced at grave cost to liberty. There are only two alternatives: either we maintain the pattern by banning certain transaction or we constantly intervene in the market to redistribute property.

Either way we need to make intrusions into people’s lives: by stopping them from doing what they want to do or limiting their freedom in some other ways. Proper respect for liberty, then, rules out enforcing a patterned distribution.

Imagine a society in which the distribution of wealth fits a particular pattern. Suppose, for simplicity’s sake, that it is an equal distribution, and let us call it D1. Now suppose that 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.

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.

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 twenty-five cents, so they have no grounds for complaint either.

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.

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 upset any patterned principle of distributive justice.

The example also shows that ‘liberty upsets patterns,’ that allowing individuals the freedom to use their holdings as they choose will inevitably destroy any pattern of distribution.

According to Nozick, all patterned theories of distributive justice restrict people’s free actions. We will constantly have to intervene with the distribution of property to bring it back into line with the original pattern. A proper regard for liberty, Nozick argues, is incompatible with enforcing any patterned distribution of property.

Taxation and redistribution
Nozick argues that any attempt to impose a pattern of holdings will violate individual liberty. In order to preserve a pattern we must either prohibit people from making pattern-breaking transactions, or forcibly redistribute property on a regular basis.

In Nozick’s view, taxation is equivalent to forced labor. Taxing earnings is, in effect, forcing taxpayers to work unpaid. To take the fruits of one person’s labor for the benefit of another is effectively to make one person work for another against his will.

Taking a proportion of earnings is like making a person spend a proportion of his time working for the benefits of others. Taxation by the state for the provision of social welfare – a forced transfer – is unjust.

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.

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 external objects or 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 external objects.

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 unlike 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.

Justice as Entitlement

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