Lockean proviso
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The Lockean proviso is a feature of
Locke's formulation
Nor was this appropriation of any parcel of land, by improving it, any prejudice to any other man, since there was still enough and as good left, and more than the yet unprovided could use. So that, in effect, there was never the less left for others because of his enclosure for himself. For he that leaves as much as another can make use of, does as good as take nothing at all. Nobody could think himself injured by the drinking of another man, though he took a good draught, who had a whole river of the same water left him to quench his thirst. And the case of land and water, where there is enough of both, is perfectly the same.
—Second Treatise of Government, Chapter V, paragraph 33
Overview
The phrase Lockean proviso was coined by
Locke's proviso has been used by
Libertarians of the modern
French researcher Ai-Thu Dang has criticized Nozick's reading of the Lockean proviso, saying it denatures its meaning, especially Locke's "articulation to moral rules governing enrichment".[9]
Socialist critics of the Proviso such as G.A. Cohen point to the issue that the Proviso does not take into account previously existing inequalities. Cohen describes the Lockean Proviso's first-come-first-served approach as "morally dubious". He uses the example of someone claiming a beach as "their own" and charging admission in exchange for lifeguarding service. This would satisfy the proviso because it doesn't make anyone's life "worse" but it fails to consider how much better off everyone would be if someone owned the beach and charged only 50 cents for better service. He continues that this superior alternative is never considered under Nozick’s proviso.[10]
Karl Widerquist and Grant McCall argue that even weak versions of the proviso, such as the one used by Nozick, are unfulfilled by contemporary societies. The poorest people today, even in wealthy nations, are worse off than they could reasonably expect to be in a stateless hunter-gatherer band that treats the environment as commons that cannot be owned by anyone. They write, "Establishing hunter-gatherer quality-of-life as the baseline for comparison sets an extremely low bar. The tragedy of state societies today is that for all their wealth and achievement they have so consistently failed to surpass that bar."[11][12][13]
See also
- Classical liberalism
- David Gauthier (cf. the Gauthierian interpretation of the Lockean proviso)
- Estate in land
- Geolibertarianism
- Georgism
- Land (economics)
- Land law
- Land reform
- Land value tax
- Law of equal liberty
References
- Second Treatise of Government, Chapter V, paragraph 33.
- ^ Nozik, Robert (1974). Anarchy, State, and Utopia. p. 175.
- ^ "Social Minimum"
- ISBN 978-0-19-152950-4.
- ^ "Public Reason - Lockean Theories of Property: Justifications for Unilateral Appropriation". publicreason.ro. Retrieved 2021-06-15.
- ^ "PDF.js viewer" (PDF). library.oapen.org. Retrieved 2021-06-15.
- ISBN 9780814775592.
- ^ Lukasz Dominiak (2017). "THE BLOCKIAN PROVISO AND RATIONALITY OF PROPERTY RIGHTS" (PDF). The Libertarian Papers.
- ^ Dang, Ai-Thu, "Libéralisme et justice sociale: la clause lockéenne des droits de propriété". In: Revue française d'économie, volume 10, n°4, 1995. pp. 205–238 [1]
- ^ Lamont, Julian; Favor, Christi (2017), "Distributive Justice", in Zalta, Edward N. (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2017 ed.), Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, retrieved 2021-02-25
- ISBN 978-0-7486-7867-9.)
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: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link - JSTOR 2219447.
- ISSN 0960-8788.