(Click here to continue on the main path)

I think Dee is getting carried away. Rawls does say 

Rawls is not saying that society or the majority can do whatever it wants with the capacities of individuals -- for example, with the capacities of those people who are the most creative and productive. He doesn't say anything like that. He doesn't say there cannot be great inequality. What he does say is that the better endowed can profit as much as possible as long as what they do also benefits the worst off group in society. That's not exactly slavery. What I think Rawls is trying to do is find rules that guarantee that everyone profits from inequality.

As far as concrete goods being manna from Heaven, I think Dee is wrong there too. Rawls specifically denied that he takes that position. Nozick accused Rawls of that, but I think he was also mistaken. As Rawls put it, "A distribution cannot be judged in isolation  from the system if which it is the outcome or from what individuals have done in good faith in the light of established expectations." [Theory , section 14]

Nozick believes that "things come into being already held" [Anarchy, State, and Utopia, p. 219]. Perhaps that's often true. But Nozick assumes that if something comes into being already held, then the holder has a very broad set of rights to that thing. Our question is prior to that. We want to know just what sort of rights the maker or holder should have to anything, including what they make. Rawls believes that there are certain background conditions that must be maintained in order for voluntary transactions among holdings to be just. We can accept the results of such transactions if the background conditions are maintained, but if the results of the transactions undermine the necessary background conditions, then the transactions are no longer justified. Property rights have to be constructed in such a way as to allow interference in order to maintain those conditions.

There is nothing in the Original Position or in the two principles to prevent individuals from having important claims on things because they made them. But for Rawls those claims are not the same as those defended by libertarians.