John Rawls And Robert Nozick And Entitlement Theory

Attempting to address wealth inequality while not ruining the efficiency of the market is no simple task to undertake. John Rawls and Robert Nozick attempt to address this issue by providing differing perspectives on the dilemma of distributive justice. While Rawls argues in favour of a form of Social Contractionalism wherein individuals are asked to assume a position of ignorance when establishing societal minimums of justice, Nozick argues in favour of his Entitlement Theory where justice is found through whether or not an individual is entitled to his/her possessions. Though both arguments have merit, Rawls’ argument proves to be more formidable and better suited to solve the issues of wealth inequality without ruining market efficiency.
This entitlement is based on “the principle of acquisition of holdings, the principle of transfer of holdings, and the principle of rectification of violations of the first two principles.” (Nozick, p. 205) Nozick believes that so long as holdings are obtained through these means and not through defraud, harm, or other nefarious ones, the holdings are just (Nozick, p. 204). Nozick argues against the idea of distributive justice as a way to promote equality of outcome as he believes that forcing people to give up their wealth in order to distribute it to others violates the Entitlement Theory and leads to an unjust outcome; individuals have liberty and should have the freedom to do with their property as they choose (Nozick, p. 209-210). To Nozick, the only time a forced distribution should be considered is in cases of injustice, wherein one person has, in the past, violated another person’s right to acquisition or transfer of holdings (Nozick, p. 205). Thus, Nozick would argue that a system which tries to focus on distributing wealth to those less well-off would be unjust as violates an individual’s property rights and rights to economic liberty, and would be damaging to the efficiency of a free