Ariadne's Thread on Property
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Speaker I really don't see the point to all this contract theory.

First of all, I will bet you anything that when each philosopher examines the initial position and comes to a conclusion about what contract people in that initial position would make, it just happens to be a contract that supports his political philosophy. Do you think it just happens that liberal John Rawls finds a contract that leads to more benefits for the poor? Or that libertarian Jan Narveson finds a contract that supports libertarian principles? Not on your life. Everybody finds what they want in contract theory.

And secondly, what difference does it make? Suppose Loren Lomasky is right and people in some imaginary initial state would agree to libertarian principles. So what? We don't live in a world in which those principles have been followed. We live in a world in which a half dozen European powers stole two whole continents from their inhabitants in the 16th century. We live in a world in which Soviet communism redistributed the wealth of a gigantic empire in the 20th century. How are we supposed to deal with that? Are we just supposed to say that everybody can keep the property they have and we will move forward from here? That's morally crazy. If anything, we would be driven to some sort of welfare state just to make up for the crimes of the past.

My point is that I don't see how contract theory helps us at all.



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