However, not everyone follows these rules: "some people steal from others, or defraud them, or enslave them, seizing their product and preventing them from living as they choose, or forcibly exclude others from competing in exchanges" (Nozick 1974:152).
Taxation of the rich to support full robust social programs for the poor is unjust because the state is acquiring money by force instead of through a voluntary transaction.
Given the justice of acquisition condition and the Lockean proviso, "It is conceivable that in the normal operation of the economy, a private property regime might at some times, for some people, fail to provide access to this level of welfare when left to itself.
If so, then justice—as the libertarian understands it—demands that the state act to correct the distribution of welfare generated by the spontaneous play of market forces.
In his later work The Examined Life, Nozick reflects that entitlement theory's defense of people's holdings may have some problems, in that it could eventually lead to the vast majority of resources being pooled in the hands of the extremely skilled, or, through gifts and inheritance, in the hands of the extremely skilled's friends and children.