“ On any non-anarchist view, people may be legitimately expropriated for some purposes, even if those purposes are limited to funding the “night watchman” functions of a minimal libertarian state, compensating people for the imposition of negative externalities, and so on. We can agree with Nozick that “No one has a right to something whose realization requires certain uses of things and activities that other people have right and entitlements over,” in the sense that it will not do to talk in abstract terms about people having a “right to” whatever seems good for people to have, as though these goods were just manna from heaven. We need to speak clearly about what we think other people are obligated to provide those we’re asserting have a right, and which of those obligations may be coercively enforced.
