Abstract

According to the conservative view defended in this paper, justice holds when people have what they deserve and do not have what they do not deserve. Some of the questions considered are: how to tell what people deserve, why people should get what they deserve, how mistakes in the distribution of good and bad things can be corrected, why all egalitarian theories of justice are fundamentally mistaken, what makes the conservative view of justice practical, and what implications the conservative view has for taxation and prosperity. Familiar objections to the conservative view of justice are also considered and shown to be readily answerable.