 Unfortunately for the theory, it would seem that no such treatment will ever be forthcoming because the task is, for all practical purposes, impossible. The numbers of injustices perpetrated throughout history, both within nations and between them, are enormous and the necessary details of the vast majority of injustices are unavailable. Even if the details of the injustices were available, the counterfactual causal chains could not be reliably determined. As Derek Parfit has pointed out, in a different context, even the people who would have been born would have been different (Parfit 1986). As a consequence, it is difficult to see how Nozick’s entitlement theory could provide guidance as to what the current distribution of material holdings should be or what distributions or redistributions are legitimate or illegitimate. (Indeed Nozick suggests, for instance, the Difference Principle may be the best implementation of the principle of rectification.) Although Nozick is fairly candid about this consequence, many of his supporters and critics have ignored it and have carried on a vigorous debate as though, contrary to Nozick’s own statement, his theory can be used to evaluate the justice of current economic distributions. 