Abstract: I am grateful to Fabian Wendt for responding to my evaluation of his work on Moderate Libertarianism. Wendt’s efforts are important because they focus on foundational issues of justice and there is a dearth of quality work on those issues these days. Due to lack of space, the most productive way to structure this brief rejoinder is to focus on two general issues before touching on one smaller point. First, I explain why Wendt offers something like an empirical justification of libertarianism. Here I will be clearer than I originally was about why this is a problem that Wendt needs to address better than he has. It is my hope that this initial discussion paves the way for me to demonstrate my second point—namely, that Wendt’s statement of his own argument for the proviso is either question-begging or unsurprising. I conclude by saying a little bit about Wendt’s discussion of positive obligations.

Keywords: sufficiency proviso, consequentialism, positive rights, self-ownership

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Abstract: Fabian Wendt proposes combining libertarian foundations with a proviso that requires a just system of private property to ensure that everyone has a sufficient amount of resources to pursue projects. He calls this proviso a sufficiency proviso. This proviso is said to have advantages over all rival provisos “because it better coheres with the most plausible rationale for endorsing a libertarian theory of justice in the first place” (Wendt 2018b, 169). Given these advantages, he expresses surprise that no other libertarians have defended a sufficiency proviso. I trace Wendt’s argument and identify several weaknesses in it. I argue that, at is stands, the argument for a sufficiency proviso fails.

Keywords: sufficiency proviso, consequentialism, justice, care, self-ownership

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