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Full Idea
If we assume that everyone is entitled to the goods they currently possess (their 'holdings'), then a just distribution is simply whatever distribution results from people's free exchanges.
Gist of Idea
If people hold things legitimately, just distribution is simply the result of free exchanges
Source
report of Robert Nozick (Anarchy,State, and Utopia [1974]) by Will Kymlicka - Contemporary Political Philosophy (1st edn) 4.1.b
Book Ref
Kymlicka,Will: 'Contemporary Political Philosophy (1st edn)' [OUP 1992], p.96
A Reaction
If people's current 'legitimate' holdings are hugely unequal, it seems very unlikely that the ensuing exchanges will be 'free' in the way that Nozick envisages.
| 7670 | Kant is the father of the notion of exploitation as an evil [Kant, by Berlin] |
| 5284 | Communism abolishes private property and dissolves the powerful world market [Marx/Engels] |
| 22599 | Hayek was a liberal, but mainly concerned with market freedom [Hayek, by Dunt] |
| 22600 | Impeding the market is likely to lead to extensive state control [Hayek] |
| 18641 | If people hold things legitimately, just distribution is simply the result of free exchanges [Nozick, by Kymlicka] |
| 18640 | Libertarians like the free market, but they also think that the free market is just [Kymlicka] |
| 9129 | I can buy any litre of water, but not every litre of water [Sorensen] |
| 20524 | Market prices indicate shortages and gluts, and where the profits are to be made [Wolff,J] |
| 20685 | No market is free of political bias, and markets need protection of their freedoms [Harari] |
| 23134 | A 'free' society implies a free market, which always produces predatory capitalism and inequalities [Gopnik] |