The Liberal Foundation for the Proposition of Equal Claims to Purely Natural Resources*

Abstract: There is a long tradition among liberal thinkers of endorsing the proposition that people have equal claims to natural resources. In this paper, I provide a brief survey of liberal writings that demonstrates the wide support for this idea among social contract thinkers, classical liberals, libertarians, and egalitarian liberals. I argue, however, that the supporters of this idea have failed to sufficiently justify their position. After providing a careful definition of natural resources and introducing the concept of purely natural resources, I present two arguments for the proposition that people have equal claims to purely natural resources. The first is aimed at libertarians and focuses on the independence of purely natural resource value from labor. The second is aimed at egalitarian liberals and focuses on the coherence and desirability of treating natural resources separately from other resources to which people have equal claims. In making these arguments, I focus special attention on liberal thinkers such as the right-wing libertarians and John Rawls who do not already endorse the proposition of equal claims to natural resources. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of the relationship between non-liberal thinkers and the idea of equal natural resource claims