UC San Diego

In what follows, I present a left-libertarian theory of justice, according to which we all have rights of full self-ownership and equal world-ownership. While these ideas are appealing, many have objected to them, both on their own and as a pair. Egalitarians often say that full self-ownership violates equality by letting some amass far more than others due to sheer luck. Libertarians often say that distributive equality violates liberty by taking the fruits of the labor of some to give to others. Many who accept either idea thus reject the other as unjustified, and eschew theories which conjoin the two, as my theory does, as incoherent. My contribution is to state a form of left-libertarianism which answers these criticisms in a more decisive way than others have thus far. We can indeed justify both full self-ownership and equal world-ownership in a way which addresses these objections.