 However, a defender of a desertist theory of political economic distributive justice like the one sketched earlier might claim, in reply, that the distributional system itself might be justified in virtue of the fact that citizens deserve to live in a country where such a system is in place. Perhaps it could be argued that citizens deserve this because they need it in order to flourish as human beings, and no individual human being is capable of establishing such a distributional system on his or her own. If this is right, it would apparently follow that the theory as a whole is a desertist theory of distributive justice. It remains to be seen whether Scanlon’s objections to desertist theories of justice ultimately succeed, or whether a desertist theory of the sort sketched may in the end prove to be acceptable.