By Darin Lawson Hosking in Rights — Oct 29, 2025

The Moral Case for Universal Basic Income

Behind the walls of exclusion, a path to universal provision emerges. A society built on property rights carries a fundamental duty to guarantee everyone the right to live without taking.

Private Property vs. Universal Provision: A visual exploration of the social contract's hidden exclusions and the moral case for a basic income.

The Foundational Debt Why Private Property Morally Demands Uni

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The Reciprocal Covenant: Property Rights, Exclusion, and the Moral Case for Universal Basic Income

Introduction

The social contract is the philosophical foundation of modern society. It's the implicit agreement where individuals consent to give up certain freedoms in exchange for the protection and benefits of organized society. But beneath this idea of voluntary association lies a more fundamental truth that we often overlook: property rights create systems of exclusion that generate moral obligations in return.

When society made private property part of its moral and legal framework, it didn't just create rights. It created duties. The institution of property allows some people to exclude others from access to land, water, shelter, and the means of survival. This power of exclusion carries with it an unavoidable counterweight: society owes all its members the minimum means to live within the system it has created.

This article argues that Universal Basic Income is not a luxury, social experiment, or progressive policy preference. Instead, it emerges as a moral necessity. It's a right born at the same moment we drew fences, claimed titles, and declared certain land "owned." To accept property law is to accept its counterweight: that society owes all its members the means to survive within its boundaries.

Think about the contradiction here. We deny people the right to take what they need to live. But we also deny them the right to live without taking. This contradiction undermines the very legitimacy on which property rights rest.

The concept of the social contract became prominent in the 1600s as philosophers tried to explain the basis of political authority and individual obligation.

Thomas Hobbes famously argued that without government, life in a "state of nature" would be "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short." This would lead people to surrender their freedoms to a powerful authority in exchange for security.

John Locke offered a different view. He argued that people have natural rights to life, liberty, and property that exist regardless of what any particular society's laws say. For Locke, legitimate government comes from a social contract where people conditionally transfer some rights to better protect their lives, liberty, and property.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau later presented yet another interpretation. He argued that in the state of nature, humans were solitary but healthy, happy, and free. He believed that the introduction of private property marked a step toward inequality. This made law and government necessary as ways of protecting property. Rousseau's insight was important: civil society came into being partly to ensure the right to property for those fortunate enough to have possessions. This arrangement benefited everyone to some degree, but it mostly benefited the rich.

The Hidden Exclusions Within the Contract

What these early thinkers recognized (though often incompletely) was that property systems always involve exclusion. Modern property scholars focus on what property means for those who don't have it, rather than those who do. They emphasize the element of property that most needs justification: its power to impose restrictions on everyone except the property owner.

Contemporary scholars like Charles Mills and Carole Pateman have revealed how traditional social contract theories hid systematic exclusions. Mills argues that social contract theory has served to keep the true political reality hidden from view. The reality is that some people are given the full rights and freedoms of persons, while others are treated as less than full persons.

The social contract, far from being a universal agreement among equals, has historically encoded and legitimized deep inequalities.

Property Rights and the Problem of Exclusion

Locke's Labor Theory and Its Provisos

John Locke's theory of property acquisition remains the most influential account in Western political thought. Locke argued that although the earth was given to humanity in common, individuals could claim private property by mixing their labor with natural resources. His famous idea: when someone works on something from nature, that labor enters into the object, making it their property.

However, Locke recognized that this appropriation could not be unlimited. He placed two constraints on property acquisition:

The spoilage proviso: One cannot allow what they take to spoil
The "enough and as good" proviso: Appropriation is acceptable only if it leaves "enough and as good" for others

This second constraint (known as the Lockean proviso) is where the moral foundations of distributive obligations become unavoidable.

The Failure of the Lockean Proviso in Modern Society

The problem, as many scholars have noted, is that the Lockean proviso cannot be satisfied in today's world.

Scholars Karl Widerquist and Grant McCall argue that even weak versions of the proviso are unfulfilled by contemporary societies. They note that the poorest people today, even in wealthy nations, are worse off than they could reasonably expect to be in a stateless hunter-gatherer society that treats the environment as shared commons.

Robert Nozick demonstrated through logical reasoning that if there is not "enough and as good left" today, then the most recent appropriation must have violated the proviso. And so have all the ones before it, including the very first one.

Every parcel of desirable land has been claimed. There is no frontier of unclaimed resources. The poorest among us cannot simply "go homestead" their way to property ownership as Locke imagined.

Even Locke himself seemed to recognize this problem in his later work. In his 1697 "Essay on the Poor Law," he appears to view at least some of the poor as people who have been denied the opportunity to work. They are worse off than they would have been if they were still living in an open commons.

The Right to Preservation and Duties of Charity

This brings us to a crucial but often overlooked aspect of Locke's philosophy. Locke believed there is a fundamental right of each person to the means of preservation (survival). In the First Treatise, he argued that God has given the needier members of the population "a right to the surplusage" of the goods of others.

This wasn't mere charity in the modern voluntary sense. Locke stated that "it would always be a Sin, in any Man of Estate, to let his Brother perish for want of affording him relief out of his Plenty." The right to preservation grounds both property rights and obligations of provision.

Here's the key point: When property systems deny people access to the commons from which they might meet their own needs, obligations to provide for those needs arise as a matter of right, not kindness.

Structured Deprivation: When Exclusion Becomes Violence

The Nature of Property as Exclusion

Property is fundamentally about exclusion. To own something is to have the right to exclude others from using it. This power of exclusion is what separates property from mere possession. When we accept property rights, we accept a system where people can legitimately prevent others from accessing resources necessary for survival.

Think about a world where all valuable land is owned, all water sources controlled, all shelter claimed. In such a world, to deny someone property is not simply to deny them a particular piece of land. It is to deny them access to any land, any water, any shelter. The combined effect of individual property rights is a complete system of exclusion.

Exclusion Without Provision: The Moral Contradiction

Here lies the fundamental moral problem: exclusion without provision is not a society. It is structured deprivation.

Consider the logic:

Society creates a property system that gives some the right to exclude others from access to land, water, and resources
This system denies individuals the ability to meet their basic needs through direct access to nature
Society then declares: "You cannot take what you need to survive"
But society also declares: "You cannot survive without taking"

This is an impossible contradiction. It makes moral sense to deny people the right to take only if you provide them the right to live without taking. Otherwise, property rights become not a system of justice but a mechanism of systematic violence against those excluded from ownership.

Property Law as a Two-Sided Covenant

To accept property law is to accept its counterweight. When we agreed to a system where some may fence off land and exclude others, we implicitly agreed that those doing the excluding bear obligations to those excluded. The property owner who says "this land is mine, you cannot use it" has accepted the reciprocal duty that arises from that exclusion.

Thomas Aquinas recognized this principle. He argued that no division of resources based on human law can overrule the necessities associated with extreme poverty. This theme appears throughout the Western tradition as an essential limit on property rights.

Property rights, properly understood, are not absolute. They exist within a moral framework that recognizes the prior claim of survival. When property systems make survival outside their terms impossible, they must make survival within their terms possible.

Universal Basic Income as Moral Necessity

From Theoretical Obligation to Practical Implementation

The philosophical argument establishes that society owes its members the means to survive within the system it has created. The question becomes: how should this obligation be fulfilled?

Traditional welfare states have tried to fulfill this duty through various conditional programs. These include unemployment insurance, food assistance, and housing subsidies. Yet these programs, however well-meaning, have an element of moral confusion. They treat the obligation to provide for basic survival as dependent on worthiness, behavior, or circumstance. But in fact, this obligation comes from the more fundamental right to preservation in the face of systemic exclusion.

Universal Basic Income is a policy proposal for providing all members of a community with a regular cash grant. It has no means testing, no consideration of personal desert, and no strings attached. The amount should be enough to ensure freedom from economic insecurity. Unlike traditional welfare, UBI recognizes that the obligation to provide for basic needs does not come from individual failure. It comes from the structure of property rights itself.

From philosopher John Rawls' perspective, rational people who don't know their position in society would likely secure a baseline income floor. This would shield them from structural disadvantages. Philosopher Amartya Sen's capability approach similarly emphasizes how UBI enhances real freedoms. This is particularly important when economic structures limit people's ability to meet basic needs.

But the argument presented here is more fundamental than even these philosophical frameworks suggest. UBI isn't justified primarily by appeals to fairness, efficiency, or optimal social arrangements. It is justified by the inherent contradiction in any property system that excludes people from access to survival resources while denying them alternative means of survival.

The social contract, properly understood, includes this reciprocal covenant: we accept restrictions on taking (property rights) in exchange for the guarantee of provision (basic income). You cannot coherently demand the first without accepting the second.

Addressing the "Reciprocity" Objection

A common objection to UBI is that it violates principles of reciprocity. The argument is that those who do not contribute should not receive. This objection fundamentally misunderstands where the obligation comes from.

The duty to provide a basic income does not come from individual contribution or merit. It comes from the fact of exclusion itself. When property systems deny people the opportunity to provide for themselves through direct access to resources, society accepts an obligation to provide alternative means. This is not a gift or transfer based on what people deserve. It is compensation for exclusion, fulfillment of the other side of the property covenant.

Moreover, human needs provide an objective basis for moral rights. Failure to satisfy vital needs leads to death, illness, substance abuse, and deep suffering. A society that structures itself in ways that predictably create needs-deprivation among those excluded from property ownership bears direct moral responsibility.

Contemporary Implications and Counterarguments

The Lockean Proviso in the 21st Century

Some scholars argue that the Lockean proviso is actually easier to satisfy under private property systems. They say these systems allocate resources to their highest valued uses and create higher levels of wealth. The claim is that while appropriation leaves fewer things to appropriate, it also makes more things accessible that improve lives.

But this argument confuses overall social wealth with individual access to the means of survival. The fact that society as a whole is wealthier than hunter-gatherer bands does not address the moral problem facing the individual who is excluded from all property and denied the means to survive. Total prosperity does not satisfy the proviso if individuals are left unable to meet basic needs.

UBI in an Age of Automation and Concentration

The moral argument for UBI becomes even more pressing in today's conditions. As artificial intelligence and automation increasingly replace traditional forms of work, the tension between property rights and survival obligations intensifies. AI-driven productivity generates immense value from publicly funded data and infrastructure. Yet this value increasingly concentrates among capital owners.

When automation makes large portions of the population economically unnecessary (when their labor is no longer needed for production), the contradiction becomes stark. Property systems that exclude people from resources while also excluding them from the opportunity to earn income through labor create an impossible situation. The reciprocal obligation to provide for survival becomes not just morally necessary but practically urgent.

Beyond Poverty Alleviation to Recognition of Right

It is crucial to understand that the argument for UBI as moral necessity differs from arguments for UBI as poverty alleviation or economic stimulus. The property-based argument for UBI is based on rights. It is justified not because of the outcomes it produces but because it gives people what they are owed as a matter of right.

This distinction matters. Policies justified by outcomes can be abandoned when circumstances change or when other policies promise better results. But policies justified by rights persist because the underlying moral claim persists. The right to basic provision in exchange for exclusion from direct access to resources is not dependent on economic conditions. It is inherent in the structure of property itself.

Conclusion: The Moral Architecture of Property and Provision

The social contract is not simply an agreement to coexist. From the moment we made private property part of the moral and legal order, we accepted a shared idea with profound implications: that some may exclude others from access to land, water, and shelter. This idea has enabled enormous prosperity and complex civilization. But exclusion without provision is not a society. It is structured deprivation.

To accept property law is to accept its counterweight. We cannot deny people the right to take what they need to live and then deny them the right to live without taking. That contradiction undermines legitimacy. It reveals property systems not as neutral frameworks of justice but as mechanisms of organized exclusion that demand moral justification.

Universal Basic Income emerges from this analysis not as a luxury or social experiment but as a moral necessity. It is a right born at the same moment we drew fences and claimed titles. It is the recognition, formalized in policy, that the same social contract which grants some the right to exclude others thereby requires society to provide those excluded with alternative means of survival.

If society is to prohibit survival outside its terms, then it must provide survival within them. This is not redistribution based on compassion or political preference. It is the fulfillment of an obligation inherent in property rights themselves. It is the reciprocal covenant that makes property systems morally coherent.

The question before us is not whether society owes its members the means to survive within the system it has created. That obligation was accepted when we declared the first acre "owned" and turned the first person away. The question is only whether we will acknowledge this obligation and structure our institutions accordingly. Or will we continue to enforce property rights while denying the reciprocal duties they necessarily require?