In addition to these general assumptions, Nozick advanced some more
speciWc claims about how best toXesh out an entitlement theory. Thus, he
claimed that persons possess rights offull self-ownershipthat rule out not only
involuntary slavery, but also any involuntary redistributive taxes on income
from labor. Explaining how individuals could unilaterally acquire ownership
rights in previously non-owned natural resources, he relied on a modiWed
Lockean proviso, stating that appropriators of a previously unowned resource
need only ensure that others are made no worse oVthan they otherwise
would have been had that resource remained unowned. Since non-ownership
is ineYcient, Nozick argued his proviso would be easily satisWed, and so only
infrequently require political action to redistribute wealth or limit powers of
transfer.
Given Nozick’s entitlement theory contained no measures requiring a
system of property rights to protect individuals from diVerential luck, it
was relatively straightforward for him to conclude that it was possible for a
system of property rights to be just without mitigating the diVerential eVects
of the social and natural lottery, or eliminating destitution. In addition, he
argued that justice prohibits many redistributive public policies. Such pol-
icies, he objected, implicitly assume that resources are available for distribu-
tion (Nozick 1974 , 149 – 50 ), but that assumption is unsound since individuals
are self-owners, and will have acquired unequal claims to material resources
due by exercising their powers to appropriate and transfer property. Any
policies required by the diVerence principle, Nozick concluded, could be
justiWable, at best, as remedial measures to rectify previous violations of
individuals’ entitlements, given ignorance about what would have happened
in the absence of injustice (Nozick 1974 , 231 ).
4 Economic Liberty
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Because of humanity’s record of genocide, slavery, and violent expropriation,
Nozick’s failure to defend any particular principles of rectiWcation meant that
his view’s positive implications for public policy were severely indeterminate.
Even if they had been less indeterminate, however, it is unlikely that Nozick’s
own version of entitlement theory would have won more converts. For
liberty, equality, and property 491