"Olsaretti sets out this book with a modest motivation. She considers the highly ambitious claims that the market-created inequalities are just, and offers the careful and detailed analysis on the desert-based and entitlement-based justifications of the free market. Her criticisms against these justifications are powerful and original. Furthermore, she brilliantly shows the surprising result that libertarianism would justify not the free market but the empowerment of individuals' voluntary choices. This is, without doubt, a significant contribution to the theories of distributive justice in general and the libertarian theory in particular. The book is a required reading for anyone with an interest in moral philosophy, political theory and welfare economics."

"This book is a must-read for philosophers working on desert-based or libertarian theories of justice. Olsaretti digs deeply into the concepts which are at the center of these theories, and engages the prominent figures in the literature (for desert: Julian Lamont and David Miller; for libertarianism: Robert Nozick) at considerable length. Throughout, her work is unfailingly careful and precise. However, for these same reasons, Olsarettis book will be frustrating to non- philosophers. For those not already familiar with the debates surrounding these concepts, long stretches of it will be tough sledding. Even philosophers may be left wanting more. What restrictions on the free market would give better expression to the appropriate conceptions of desert and voluntariness? How important are these values compared to others (e.g., utility)? Apart from some highly interesting speculation at the end of the book, Olsaretti offers little sustained discussion of these questions."

"These books attack free markets and libertarianism, alleging that their fundamental assumptions are philosophically indefensible. Olsaretti challenges the thesis that free markets produce distributively just outcomes. At most, however, she shows that limited, desert-based justifications of free-market outcomes fail to satisfy her questionable desiderata, and that particular entitlement-based justifications are inadequately supported when they confound voluntariness and freedom. [...] Though both of these books fail to demonstrate the strong conclusions they assert, they highlight the dangers of substituting polemic for philosophy. Free markets, property and liberty need, and deserve, rigorous philosophical defences."