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ArgumentThe self-ownership argument
I own myself: no one has over my body, my time, and my labor a right that I have not granted them. What comes of it is therefore mine.
Supports
Nozick, Locke · · 1974
- Each person owns themselves, their body, their time, their powers; no one else holds a prior right over them, else slavery would be legitimate. It is a that no society confers and none may withdraw.
- Now what I produce with what is mine, and what others freely transfer to me in exchange, extends that ownership: the fruit of labor and free exchange belongs to me on the same footing.
- A distribution is then just according to how it came about, through legitimate acquisitions and transfers, not according to the shape it forms at a given instant: there is no 'right snapshot' of wealth to be enforced.
- Hence, forcibly taking part of my earnings to redraw that snapshot is to dispose of my labor without my consent, thus to treat me as if I belonged in part to others.
Therefore So an imposed redistribution is not a fair sharing but a violation of rights: justice bears on the legitimacy of acquisitions, not on equality of outcome.
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Deepenings
Original acquisition
- The whole chain of holdings goes back to a first title: how does an unowned thing become legitimately mine?
- By mixing my labor with it, answers , provided that 'enough, and as good' is left for others. This original title, passed on by free exchange, grounds all the rest.
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