Questions: Property Rights and Principles of Distributive Justice

Question 1

A society begins with an equal distribution of wealth. Over time, people voluntarily pay a talented musician to perform, making the musician wealthy and others poorer. According to Nozick, what must a government do if it wants to restore equality?

• A. Nothing — the resulting inequality is just because it arose from voluntary transfers
• B. Tax the transfers to prevent any inequality from emerging, thereby violating the musician's entitlements
• C. Apply the difference principle to determine whether the inequality benefits the worst-off
• D. Restore equality only if the original distribution was itself historically unjust

Answer: (A)

This is Nozick's 'Wilt Chamberlain argument.' If each individual transaction was voluntary and consensual, the resulting inequality is just — regardless of the pattern it produces. Nozick's deeper point is that maintaining any patterned principle (like equality) requires the state to continuously interfere with free exchange, taxing or blocking voluntary transactions. He sees this as a rights violation: it treats people's holdings as collective property subject to redistribution. Option 1 describes what egalitarians must do, which is precisely Nozick's objection to patterned theories.

Question 2

According to Rawls's difference principle, which distribution of wealth is just?

• A. The one that gives everyone exactly equal shares
• B. The one that maximizes total social welfare, even if some members are very badly off
• C. The one that arose through just historical acquisition and voluntary transfer
• D. The one where any inequalities make the worst-off group better off than they would be under strict equality

Answer: (D)

The difference principle does not require equality — it permits inequality when the inequality is structured to benefit the least advantaged. If unequal property holdings, salaries, or returns on investment create incentives that grow the economy and raise even the floor of wellbeing, those inequalities are just. Option 0 is the egalitarian view Rawls explicitly rejects. Option 1 is utilitarianism, which Rawls critiques. Option 2 is Nozick's entitlement view. Rawls's innovation is that justice governs the background structure of institutions, not the pattern of individual holdings.

Question 3

For Nozick, whether a distribution is just depends primarily on how holdings were acquired and transferred, not on what the resulting pattern of distribution looks like.

• T. True
• F. False

Answer: True

This is the core of Nozick's historical entitlement theory. Justice is purely procedural: if each holding was acquired through just original appropriation and transferred through voluntary exchange, the distribution is just — regardless of whether it is equal, unequal, or matches any particular pattern. There is no such thing as an inherently just or unjust distribution in the abstract; only the history of acquisition and transfer determines justice.

Question 4

Rawls's difference principle is an egalitarian principle that holds economic inequality to be inherently unjust and calls for its elimination.

• T. True
• F. False

Answer: False

The difference principle explicitly permits inequality — it only requires that inequalities be structured to benefit the least advantaged. Rawls accepts that incentive structures requiring unequal holdings may be necessary for productivity growth that raises everyone's standard of living, including those at the bottom. He is not a strict egalitarian. The principle governs background institutions (tax policy, inheritance rules, the basic structure of society), not individual transactions, and it allows considerable inequality if the least advantaged group is better off as a result.

Question 5

What does Nozick mean when he argues that patterned principles of justice require 'continuous interference' with people's lives? Why does he think this undermines egalitarian and Rawlsian theories of justice?

Model answer: Any patterned principle specifies what a just distribution looks like (equal shares, or distributions that benefit the worst-off). But free human choices — working, trading, giving, buying — continuously disturb any fixed pattern. To maintain the pattern, the state must restrict or tax these voluntary transactions. Nozick argues this requires treating people's holdings as collective resources available for redistribution, rather than as the individual's to dispose of freely — which he sees as equivalent to forced labor, taking what belongs to one person and giving it to another without consent.

Nozick's deepest objection is that patterned principles deny the separateness of persons: they treat society as having a collective entitlement to determine how resources are distributed, rather than respecting individuals as the holders of rights over the products of their own labor and voluntary exchange. Rawlsians respond that adjusting background institutions (not individual transactions) is different in kind — but the debate about where to draw that line remains central to political philosophy.