Abstract: In a recent essay, “Forcing Nozick Beyond the Minimal State: The Lockean Proviso and Compensatory Welfare,” I argue that Nozick’s own reading of the Lockean Proviso commits him to a welfare state. In a forceful response, Jan Narveson calls my argument into question by arguing for an especially austere reading of the Lockean Proviso as a mere extension of the principle of liberty. In this reply to Narveson, I argue that any proviso derived from the principle of liberty will require compensatory welfare for the contemporary poor. This is because liberty only has value if it can be used and many people lack the resources to do so in any substantive way. The only way Narveson can avoid this argument is to retreat to an anemic sort of liberty, but this would abandon what makes classical liberalism attractive in the first place: the preservation of substantive personal liberty.

Keywords: Jan Narveson, Lockean proviso, welfare state, wealth redistribution

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Abstract: Critics of Nozick have claimed that his formulation of the Lockean proviso is too permissive to serve as a morally plausible constraint on resource acquisition. In this essay, I advance a new critique of Nozick’s entitlement theory. In particular, I argue that even on his own permissive formulation of the Lockean proviso, he faces a dilemma. Either: (a) Nozick must accept redistributive taxation for the purposes of guaranteeing a compensatory level of welfare, which pushes him far beyond his goal of a minimal state, or (b) he must admit that his entitlement theory cannot satisfy the Lockean proviso. I will develop this dilemma by advancing a unique challenge to the way Nozick and contemporary libertarians like Jan Narveson evaluate the welfare prospects of the poor in conditions of moderate scarcity. In brief, they weight material welfare too heavily and discount more subjective elements of wellbeing, including self-mastery.

Keywords: Robert Nozick, minimal state, Lockean proviso, wealth redistribution, entitlement theory, Jan Narveson

Download PDF: “Forcing Nozick Beyond the Minimal State: The Lockean Proviso and Compensatory Welfare”