so long as the distribution was brought about by free exchanges by consenting adults...
This looks obvious in theory, but in practise... how much concent was there between Western settlers or collonists, and native American/African/Australian tribes? What happened was outright robbery, with murder or slavery oftentimes.
The concent idea assumes that the "fair rules" are established and understood by all indivuduals, and they communicate with each other unambiguously. In practise, the part of the game is to cloud or manipulate understanding of other participating subjects, even deceive them.
An important practical situation is "frontier" ethics: a few players come with a new way with prospering, and they can benefit terrifically while other players do not have a clue. At face value, the "pioneers" or "innovators" do not have to share their information. But in practise, many times they benefit in very unethical ways, effectively breaking moral tabu's of not stealing, etc. The rules they impose afterwards are typically much stronger that would have allowed them to achieve their status at first place.
Of course, in the "wild wild" world every side has to come up with protective strategies against any possible exploitation of themselves. Just as the most aggressive players have the freedom to take advantages they first see, so the majority of other players have the freedom to impose protective rules, or even some sort of redistributiom.
Whatever are collective benefits of social agreements, there will always be some who most probably would be individually better off without most of the agreements. Libertarians basically argue that it is unfair to restrict freedom of these players. But suppose, a vast majority of other players foresee that weakening of exsisting agreements would harm their life quality substantially. Would they be fair to themselves to agree to weaken those agreements? Hardly so!
Just as there is freedom to seek ever more, whether it is truely valuable to you or not, so there is freedom to be satisfied with the quality of life you have. If you have to work ever more to keep the same life style, you have freedom to resist unfavourable developments.
Of course, much boils down to what people think is favourable to them. It is possible (at least for some time) to manipulate masses of others to accept rules that are vastly favourable actually only to you. But "fair outcome" cannot be actually ignored in this discussion. If there is a social system more complicated than "wild freedom" that benefits most of the participants, and those participants realize that and have power to enforce the system, the have freedom to do that.
Logically, there are several possibilities:
Scenario 3 is most stable. We may have further subcases depending on how severe is the relative or "opportunity" disadvantage of the minority is. But again, apparencies count, and dynamical shifts are important. In particular, both "socialist" and "libertarian" systems claim to be most benefitial to a majority. Recent history showed both systems competing by side. Here I would stress that this competition is very short historically. In this short term, "libertarian" systems look better, due to apparently higher "effectivity". Here the discussion gets less empirical. My speculation is the following: "libertarian" societies are indeed more effective in short term, due to more aggressive consumption, but they are not sustainable, because of the same aggressive consumption. "Wildly free" economies must have been effectively tried many times before, but... we have to "rediscover" unbounded benefits of greed again. We have some biblical warnings, don't we?
To put it other way: the basic moral code (of not killing, not stealing, not deceiving) is there because societies unrestricted by these tabus did not have a chance to survive beyond a few generations. The modern pursuit of most effective economic activity erodes the basis moral code: the border line for what is acceptable in buisiness is becoming more vague or more arbitrary. At some moment, we may need to restore stronger ethics, or even extend it to include more respect to environment, and taking care of production or consumption impacts. Hence, the "fair rules" will evolve. After all, harsh natural environment may restrict your effective freedoms much more severely than social agreements.
In conclusion, I see nothing wrong or unfair in being sceptical about sustainability of unchecked consumption freedom. I do not advocate to put legal limits on wealth or consumption, but I do not think that making ever more money or consuming ever more should be made as easy as possible. Comparative benefits of more effective libertarian economy are mostly marginal to me, or not essential. I would support a social agreement for a less risky sustainable scenario.
