11 - Justice and Distribution of Property Flashcards
According to Marx, why does money change everything?
- Transforms (perverts) human relations
- Money is a means - “procurer of peoples and nations”
- Skills will be commoditized through wages and labour
- Money is an end (want to gain wealth)
- Money talk debases our language
According to Marx, what is the true foundation of private property?
“In actual history, it is a notorious fact that conquest, enslavement, robbery, murder, in short, force, play the greatest part”
Problems with distributive justice
- Who should get what?
- What should be distributed?
- Money? Opportunities? Rights?
What are property rights?
- Owners of resources have (limited) rights to determine what to do with them
- Objects, land, buildings, factories
- We have the right to resources ourselves
- Cluster of rights possesses (exclude others), use, sell, give away, destroy
What justifies a system of property rights?
-Promoting utility
Protecting natural rights
-Securing freedom - property secures the right to vote (need an address to vote in many cases)
-Ensuring equality - ownership of property makes everyone equal (among these owners)
What does utilitarianism say about property rights?
- Choose the distribution that maximizes happiness, well-being, or utility
- Impartiality: equal concern (does not benefit one over another)
- Diminishing marginal utility suggests that goods should be distributed equally
- The incentive argument for inequality
Robert Nozick’s libertarianism
- Basic rights include the right to private property
- Entails free-market capitalism with a minimal state
- Forced redistribution is illegitimate because it breaks the right of private property and is thus theft
John Rawls’ libertarian egalitarianism
- Unrestricted free markets generate unacceptable inequalities
- Commitment to freedom means equal freedom to all
- Redistribution can equalize freedoms
What is the income parade?
- Looks at how income is distributed
- Income is translated into height
- Some are negative height while others are huge
Rousseau’s view on private property
- The true founder of civil society
- The fruits of the earth belongs to us all
- Earth belongs to nobody
Nozick’s 3 principles on property rights
1) Justice in initial acquisition: how does ownership originate?
2) Justice in transfer: what makes an exchange just or legitimate?
3) Rectification of injustice: what should be done to correct unjust acquisition?
Where do property rights come from?
Originally everything that is now owned by someone was owned by no one
What is property from survival?
- Fundamental law of nature
- Property in whatever we need to survive
- First proviso: non-wastage (only what you truly need)
- Second proviso: leave enough and as good things for others
Objections to the survival argument
1) Doesn’t generate property rights in land, machinery, and capital – modern age property from survival does not apply (university student complex)
2) Doesn’t explain how we come to have things
What is the labour-mixing argument?
- Individuals own themselves and their own labour
- Property arises through mixing one’s labour with unowned nature
- Labour + Unowned nature = property (Building a house or another commodity)
