ABSTRACT
The multicausal nature of the MPAL and the impossibility of causal disentanglement effectively eliminate any normative implications from the MPTD. In the context of a Lockean theory of property rights, the MPTD carries normative implications for factor rewards only if the marginal product of a factor is monocausal – which is never the case – or only if the specific marginal products of the various factors can be disentangled – which is impossible. Without disentanglement, no moral judgements concerning the distribution of rewards among the factors can be logically deduced from a Lockean theory of property rights. There are no logical grounds (based on that theory) for concluding that the marginal unit of labour has a moral right to the ownership of the marginal product that occurs after the employment of that unit (i.e. the MPAL).1
