 Some philosophers use the expression ‘pre-institutional desert’ where we use ‘desert’, and ‘institutional desert’ where we use ‘entitlement’. To avoid confusion, we will use ‘desert’ to refer to the relation that does not essentially involve the existence of social or legal institutions, and ‘entitlement’ to refer to the relation that does essentially involve the existence of such institutions. Our focus in this article is on desert; we mention entitlement only as it bears on desert. 