TRACT. It is a central tenet of most contemporary theories of justice that the
badly-off have a right to some of the resources of the well-off. In this paper, I take
as my starting point two principles of justice, to wit, the principle of sufficiency,
whereby individuals have a right to the material resources they need in order to
lead a decent life, and the principle of autonomy, whereby once everybody has
such a life, individuals should be allowed to pursue their conception of the good,
and to enjoy the fruits of their labour in pursuit of such conception. I also endorse
the value of fairness, whereby the right person or institution makes the decision
as to whether to bring about justice.
I show that justice and fairness can be satisfied only if we all enjoy a combi-
nation of private and collective rights over the world. In making that case, I shall
argue that the set of ownership rights I advocate differs from readily available
conceptions of restricted private ownership in two important respects. First, it is
such that in some circumstances, two individuals or more can have control rights
over the same property at the same time, not, as is standardly the case in legal
systems, by contracting with one another (through gifts and joint purchase), but
simply on grounds of justice. Second, it allows that, if necessary, property-owners
be expropriated from their property without compensation

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• JUSTICE, FAIRNESS, AND WORLD OWNERSHIP