  It is hard to see how redistribution in any of the diachronic senses could have any basic moral significance. That is, that some social reform involves redistribution in this sense would not as such count for or against it. Different institutional arrangements, policies, conventions, and individual behaviors will tend to produce different patterns of holdings. Each set of patterns of holdings engendered by changes in these factors can be viewed as redistributive relative to others, and whether a policy is redistributive will depend only on when it is adopted and which policies prevailed beforehand. Surely, some will do better after a policy or institutional change than they fared before it — but this is not in itself an objection to it. Similarly, though we may of course have grounds for criticizing the particular kinds of patterns that public officials intend to bring about, or for finding these policies objectionable on other grounds (for example, if they are intended to discriminate arbitrarily against minorities or other groups that are socially disfavored), the mere fact that a policy is adopted for the purpose of bringing about changes in patterns of holdings does not count for or against it.