In his text entitled “The Entitlement Theory”, the philosopher Robert Nozick speculates on a truly just economic structure in the ideal form of the state. Nozick focuses on the issue of property, its transfer and ratification, offering a model for claiming just entitlement (Vaughn, 2019). Real justice, according to Nozick, consists in the appropriation of holdings or their original acquisition, their fair and consensual transfer and the protection of the right to their property.
According to the principle of fair acquisition, people can take possession of property if they do not take it from others and do not worsen the situation of others in the process. The principle of fair transfer implies the right to donate property or voluntarily exchange it. Nozick imagines a world in which free exchange will abolish the existence of a value-currency intermediary – that is, the needs of people will be perceived as primary in the exchange of goods. The principle of ratification implies that a person who has unfairly taken possession of a holding is obliged to return it to the owner. According to Nozick, no one except the owners mentioned in the first two principles has the right to property. The author finds a fair transfer of property only in those cases when the property was originally acquired fairly and all subsequent stages in its transfer are the same.
The author calls this principle of fair distribution historical, in which it is through the circumstances or actions of acquisition that one can judge the fairness of the possession of a thing. Borrowing from John Locke’s principle of the self-property of people, Nozick says that people represent a set of talents that belong to them. Combining these talents with the surrounding world, they can encroach on the acquisition of part of this world by agreement, that is, to acquire property.
Reference
Vaughn, L. (2019). Doing ethics: Moral reasoning and contemporary values. W. W. Norton & Company.