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Title: Weak Arguments
Review: Nagel thinks that private property and incomes proceed from a system of justice necessarily supported by taxes, and as such justice is prior to private property. That argument would make sense if a coherent system of justice could be devised to match it. As it stands, Nagel only has moral theories, and everybody has one of those.Nagel tells us we cannot appeal to private property in order to justify the current distribution within society, because it is private property itself is that which needs distributing. Basically Nagel is opting for a collectivist (moralist) starting point in which every person must justify their holdings to Nagel's morality. The obvious alternative, Lockean rights theory, is dismissed on the grounds that "there are no property rights antecedent to the tax structure."Of course Nagel can define property rights how he wishes, but there have been plenty of instances of property rights (as most people understand them) in the absence of tax structures.
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