Thesis: Historical injustice calls for rectification, but arbitrariness in natural distributions is not unjust, and does not need rectifying.

WHEN DO WE HAVE A RIGHT TO DISTRIBUTE?

Nozick thought a bias against respecting separate persons lurks in the very idea of distributive justice. The idea leads people to see goods as having been distributed by a mechanism for which we are responsible. Nozick believes there generally is no such mechanism and no such responsibility. “There is no more a distributing or distribution of shares than there is a distributing of mates in a society in which persons choose whom they shall marry.”

The lesson: If we have a license to distribute X, then we ought to distribute X fairly, and Rawls gave us a theory about how to do that. However, we lack a license to distribute mates. Thus, we have no right to distribute mates unfairly, and neither do we have a right to distribute mates fairly. They are not ours to distribute.

What about inequalities? The same point applies. Unless a particular inequality is ours to arrange, theories about what would be fair are moot. More generally, to show that I have a right to distribute X according to a given plan, we may at some stage need to show that my plan is fair, but before that, we need to show that X's distribution falls within my jurisdiction. Thus, in effect, Rawls's principles do not start at the start.