This article examines the question of private coercion in market societies, arguing for an unconditional basic income guarantee from a classical liberal viewpoint. It proposes three main arguments. First, classical liberals view the purpose of government to be the reduction of coercion, both public and private. Second, a proper understanding of the nature of coercion indicates that parties subject to certain types of hardship are being coerced. Third, where the total amount of coercion is reduced by eliminating the hardship, the (...) classical liberal state must do so to fulfill its purpose. Hence, this article argues that if the total amount of coercion in society can be reduced by the state employing the amount of coercion necessary to maintain an unconditional basic income guarantee, then the classical liberal state is obligated to maintain such a guarantee by its underlying justification. (shrink)

Previous edition, 1st, published in 1971.

This book sets forth a novel theory of distributive justice premised on the fundamental moral equality of persons. It argues that, subject to certain limitations on personal sacrifice, no one should have less valuable resources and opportunities available to him than anyone else, simply invirtue of some chance occurrence the risk of which he did not choose to incur. Applying this principle to the distribution of wealth and income, the specification of property rights, and the allocation of scarce medical resources, (...) Professor Rakowski reaches challenging, often unconventional,conclusions. He further criticizes the economic analysis of law as a normative theory, and develops an alternative account of tort law.Among the topics discussed are the principles by which earnings, wealth, and gifts should be taxed; whether the compulsory removal of organs for transplantation can be justified; how doctors and public officials should make life-or-death decisions when all those endangered cannot be saved; and themorality of killing human beings and nonhuman animals. (shrink)

This article traces John Rawls’s debt to Frank Knight’s critique of the ‘just deserts’ rationale for laissez-faire in order to defend justice as fairness against some prominent contemporary criticisms, but also to argue that desert can find a place within a Rawlsian theory of justice when desert is grounded in reciprocity. The first lesson Rawls took from Knight was that inheritance of talent and wealth are on a moral par. Knight highlighted the inconsistency of objecting to the inheritance of wealth (...) while taking for granted the legitimacy of unequal reward based on differential productive capacity. Rawls agreed that there was an inconsistency, but claimed that it should be resolved by rejecting both kinds of inequality, except to the extent they benefitted the worst off. The second lesson Rawls learned from Knight was that the size of one’s marginal product depends on supply and demand, which depend on institutional decisions that cannot themselves be made on the basis of the principle of rewarding marginal productivity. The article claims that this argument about background justice overstates its conclusion, because the dependence of contribution on institutional setup is not total. Proposals for an unconditional basic income may therefore have a strike against them, as far as a reciprocity-based conception of desert is concerned. If we follow Knight’s analysis of the competitive system, however, so too does the alternative of leaving determination of income up to the market. (shrink)

John Tomasi's Free Market Fairness treats both traditions with depth, nuance, and unremitting fair-mindedness, and then points us toward a synthesis. Social democrats and libertarians equally need to read this book.

This article outlines the foundations of a nomos-observing theory of social justice, termed ‘rule egalitarianism’, that explains how the seemingly contradictory merger of classical liberalism and s...