as Nozick advocate a total "hands off" policy toward the marketplace. According to Velasquez, "Nozick's principle is based on the claim . . . that every person has a right to freedom from coercion, [and] that [right] takes priority over all other rights and values" (97). By this reasoning, then, the only distribution [of goods and services] that is just, is one that results from free individual choices.
It is interesting to note that in their advocacy of freedom from coercion, libertarians would not allow a redistribution of the wealth, or a taking from those more fortunate and giving to those less fortunate. This would be seen as a violation of the rich person's liberty to "have." Thus, the poor of society could actually become poorer--to, in effect, have less freedom as a result of being more enslaved by poverty, under a libertarian policy against the "haves" giving to the "have-nots." Velasquez quotes Robert Nozick's principle of distributive justice. It comes across as a twisted version of socialistic doctrine:
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