 I said earlier that a consequentialist defense is in trouble unless it can show that everyone is better off under a private property system, or at least that no-one is worse off. Now, a society in which all citizens derive significant advantages from the privatization of the economy is perhaps not an impossible ideal. But in every existing private property system there is a class of people who own little or nothing and who are arguably much worse off under that system than they would be under a socialist alternative. A justificatory theory cannot ignore their predicament, if only because it is their predicament that poses the justificatory issue in the first place (Waldron 1993). A hard-line consequentialist may insist that the advantages to those who profit from private ownership outweigh the costs to the underclass. Philosophically, however, this sort of hard line is quite disreputable (Rawls 1971, pp. 22–33; Nozick 1974, pp. 32–3). If we take the individual rather than a notional entity like ‘the social good’ as the focal point of moral justification, then there ought to be something we can say to each individual why the institution we are defending is worthy of her support. Otherwise it is not at all clear why she should be expected to observe its rules (except when we have the power and the numbers to compel her to do so).