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Resource Acquisition and Harm

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

John Arthur
John Arthur*
Affiliation:
Tennessee State University, Nashville, TN37203, U.S.A.
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Extract

Capitalism is often defended by appeals to natural rights: only in a free market, it is said, are people protected from the illegitimate intrusions of others. Coercion, either to prevent exchanges or to redistribute wealth, violates people's rights. But much of the property people have acquired came not from their own effort or the efforts of those who gave them gifts, but instead was taken from nature. Thus the question I propose to discuss in this paper: How is it that an unowned natural resource (land, for example) can legitimately be acquired for private benefit? Much thought has been given by libertarian defenders of capitalism to justifying the claim that, once owned, property cannot be taken without its owner's consent. Relatively little attention has been paid, however, to how the original acquisition can be justified. Indeed, I argue here that if one approaches the problem of resource appropriation from the perspective of the Lockean ‘proviso,’ that enough and as good must be left in common, then the typical method of acquiring property under capitalism is unjust. Libertarians must either give up the individualistic, state of nature approach to economic justice or admit that appropriation of natural resources requires compensation of people who do not get a share of the resource.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 17 , Issue 2 , June 1987 , pp. 337 - 347
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1987

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Footnotes

Thanks to the editors and to Marty Perlmutter, James Montmarquet and William H. Shaw for valuable comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

References

1 This remark applies to critics as well as defenders of libertarianism. Nozick's discussion of the problems is suggestive, though brief. See Nozick, Robert Anarchy, State and Utopia (New York: Basic Books 1974), 174-82.Google Scholar Sarkar, Husain ‘The Lockean Proviso,’ Canadian Journal of Philosophy 12 (1982)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, argues that the Lockean proviso interferes with liberty and, contra Nozick, is an end-state principle. Hillel Steiner outlines some of the issues internal to Nozick's suggestions regarding compensation, detailing problems in determining which persons are owed compensation and how much they are owed. (Hillel Steiner, ‘The Natural Right to the Means of Production,’ The Philosophical Quarterly 27 [1977] and ‘Nozick on Appropriation’ Mind 87 [1978].) And, finally, Judith Thomson contends that the proviso serves as a sufficient rather than, as is commonly thought, a necessary condition for just acquisition (Thomson, Judith ‘Property Acquision,’ Journal of Philosophy 73 [1976]CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

2 Nozick, 150-74

3 Nozick, 174-5

4 Nozick, 175

5 Nozick, 177. Nozick refers to these as the ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ interpretations of the proviso.

6 Nozick, 177

7 Nozick, 198 and 219

8 Nozick suggests that were the goods produced by mankind to appear as manna, then equality would be a natural rule to follow in their distribution. See note 7 above.