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Consequences are extremely important. And I think that another consequence of Nozick's system of property rights ought to be brought out more clearly.

For Nozick, one of the crucial facts about human beings is that they can form a conception of a good life and pursue it. That is one of the main reasons -- maybe the most important reason -- that he claims people have rights. Rights are intended to guarantee that people can continue to form their own conception of a good life and continue to pursue it. Another way of saying this is that rights protect self-determination or autonomy.

But to be self-determining, people need more than formal liberties or formal rights. They also need resources. And yet the system of property rights that Nozick advocates is bound to result in the emergence of a large group of people with minimal resources, perhaps nothing at all. Nozick's interpretation of the Lockean Proviso does not prevent this because it guarantees so little.

Will Kymlicka and other philosophers make a distinction between formal and substantive self-determination. Nozick's rights guarantee the former, but the latter is what everyone actually wants. It's the latter that gives libertarianism its intuitive appeal for many people.

Instead of property rights like those that Nozick advocates, we can imagine a system in which everyone is guaranteed a minimum share of resources. Perhaps we could think of it as a minimum share in the value of the natural resources that exist on earth. The point is that we can imagine systems of property (i.e., property rights) that do a great deal more to preserve substantive self-determination.