  Given its robust role in discussions of distributive justice, it is unsurprising that disagreements concerning the permissibility of redistribution have often been quite heated. Robert Nozick (1974, p 169) for example, has argued that redistribution in the form of compulsory taxation is “morally on par with forced labor.” And he has famously criticized egalitarian principles of distributive justice, such as Rawls’s difference principle (which categorizes as unjust any national economic order generating inequalities that are not to the greatest benefit of the lowest socio-economic position) on the grounds that they would require extensive redistributive transfers. In this vein, critics of so-called redistributive policies often claim that while individuals may have positive ethical duties to aid poor or unwell persons, it is morally impermissible to compel them to do so through state-administered tax and transfer or other means, unless universal consent for these policies can be secured (Narveson 2001, ch. 17).  Egalitarians, on the other hand, have often argued that redistribution through compulsory taxation and other coercively imposed measures is required to meet basic material needs or to promote other valuable social goals, and provide a legitimate, though perhaps not morally costless means of doing so.