[VOL. 48: 773, 2011] Socioeconomic Rights and Theories ofJustice SAN DIEGO LAW REVIEW Nozick's own substantive position is that "[w]hoever makes something ... is entitled to it."4 2 But we need not accept this in order to accept his critique of the allocative approach. His view is one way of linking productive and distributive issues together; there may be others. The more abstract point is that they ought to be linked and that justice ought to deal with both of them together. We need principles of justice to apply not to distribution considered apart from production or vice versa but to the structure of production enmeshed with distribution that we are likely to see in a real working economy. The holistic emphasis on structure, as opposed to distributive questions posed in isolation, is typical of Rawls's approach as well. Rawls too is anxious that the task of a theory of justice not be understood simply as an allocation of distributive shares: who gets what when and how? "We must not assume," he says, "that there is much similarity from the standpoint of justice between an administrative allotment of goods to specific persons and the appropriate design of society."A' He also says that "[i]f it is asked in the abstract whether one distribution of a given stock of things to definite individuals . . . is better than another, then there is simply no answer to this question."44 Thus, for example, Rawls's Difference Principle is not to be interpreted as dictating that the worstoff group be given a certain share of resources.4 5 Instead, the effect of the principle is that when we are designing or, more likely, evaluating and reforming the network of rules and procedures that constitute the institutional structure of society, we should do so in a way that is oriented towards the advantage of the worst-off group. The institutions should be designed to operate on the assumption that when the system is working, outcomes are evaluated purely procedurally. We are not to meddle with the outcomes of a just institutional structure even if we think that by 42. Id. at 160. 43. RAWLS, supra note 4, at 56. 44. Id at 76. 45. The Difference Principle certainly reveals a spirit congenial to something like welfare provision inasmuch as it requires particular attention to the plight of the worstoff members of society. On the other hand, it also suggests that it is possible to justify great inequalities, which on some accounts it is the task of socioeconomic rights to mitigate. In general, the Difference Principle is too abstract to generate, by itself, any particular case for welfare provision. It is a principle governing the most abstract distributive implications of the basic structure, and it deals with them holistically, without regard to particular institutional arrangements or sources of advantage or disadvantage. If the Difference Principle provides the basis of a case for socioeconomic rights, it does so in the context of its detailed elaboration. 789