Single Idea 18647

[catalogued under 25. Social Practice / C. Rights / 4. Property rights]

Full Idea

If there is no way that people can appropriate unowned resources for themselves without denying other people's claim to equal consideration, then Nozick's right of transfer never gets off the ground.

Gist of Idea

If property is only initially acquired by denying the rights of others, Nozick can't get started

Source

comment on Robert Nozick (Anarchy,State, and Utopia [1974]) by Will Kymlicka - Contemporary Political Philosophy (1st edn) 4.2.b.i

Book Reference

Kymlicka,Will: 'Contemporary Political Philosophy (1st edn)' [OUP 1992], p.109


A Reaction

The actual history of these things is too complex to judge. Early peoples desperately wanted a lord to rule over them, and their lord's ownership of the land implied the people's right to live there. See Anglo-Saxon poetry.

Related Idea

Idea 18646 How did the private property get started? If violence was involved, we can redistribute it [Kymlicka on Nozick]