Abstract

In earlier work on limitarianism, I argued that setting an upper limit to the amount of wealth that people can permissibly have is justified when decision-makers are unaware of or disagree about the appropriate distributive criterion or if they are unaware of people’s relevant features (or both). Robert Huseby has raised several powerful objections to this presumptive argument for limitarianism. Some of these objections call for a revision of my defence of presumptive limitarianism while others call for clarification, both of which I aim to do in this chapter. I will argue that unless decision-makers have substantive reasons to suggest otherwise, they must act as if there is an upper limit to the amount of wealth that people can permissibly have.