This is fairly trivial. But it is a useful way of displaying the possibility of types of transfer which are intermediate between pairs of the three broad types. Now the difference between a donation and a theft is simply that, in the first case, the initial possessor of the item to be transferred transfers it voluntarily, whereas in the second case it is transferred involuntarily. By letting v and i stand for voluntary and involuntary transfer, respectively, we can thus represent and distinguish each of the three broad types of transfer: Donation Exchange Theft Blue to Red Xv Red to Blue Xv Xv Xi
in Justice Between Generations, edited by Axel Gosseries and Lukas Meyer (Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 50-76.We here discuss and assess various libertarian positions on intergenerational justice. We do not attempt to defend libertarianism. Instead, we work out the most plausible version thereof and identify its implications for intergenerational justice.
Over the past few decades, there has been increasing interest in leftlibertarianism, which holds (roughly) that agents fully own themselves and that natural resources (land, minerals, air, and the like) belong to everyone in some egalitarian sense. Left-libertarianism agrees with the more familiar right-libertarianism about self-ownership, but radically disagrees with it about the power to acquire ownership of natural resources. Merely being the first person to claim, discover, or mix labor with an unappropriated natural resource does not-left-libertarianism insists-generate a full private property right in that natural resource. Left-libertarianism seems promising because it recognizes both strong individual rights of liberty and security and also grounds a strong demand for some kind of material equality. It seems, that is, to be a plausible a form of liberal egalitarianism.In a recent review essay of a two-volume anthology on leftlibertarianism (edited by two of us), Barbara Fried has insightfully laid out most of the core issues that confront left-libertarianism. 1 We are each left-libertarians, and we would like to take this opportunity to address some of the general issues that she raises. We shall focus, as Fried does much of the time, on the question of whether left-libertarianism is a well-defined and distinct alternative to existing forms of liberal egalitarianism. More specifically, we shall address the following fundamental issues raised by Fried (and others): (1) Does the notion of self-ownership have any determinate content? (2) What is the relation between self-
The traditional Lockean account of a state's territorial rights construes them as arising from, and coextensive with, the property rights of whichever set of landowners mutually contract to form that state. The coherence of this individualistic account has recently been challenged by Cara Nine. I argue that the reasons offered in support of that incoherence charge are unpersuasive.
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