Luck egalitarianism is a view about distributive justice espoused by a variety of egalitarian and other political philosophers. According to this view, justice demands that variations in how well-off people are should be wholly determined by the responsible choices people make and not by differences in their unchosen circumstances. This expresses the intuition that it is a bad thing for some people to be worse off than others through no fault of their own. Theory Origins Theories of luck egalitarianism were foreshadowed by 20th-century philosopher John Rawls’ theory of distributive justice in which he observed that a person’s skills and abilities led to differential distributive justice outcomes. Rawls argued that this is unfair because one’s natural talents or circumstances are morally arbitrary as they have been determined by a “natural lottery” rather than one's own choices. This concern influenced later egalitarians theories of justice, of which, Ronald Dworkin's theory of equality of resources is considered to be the first with clearly luck egalitarian features, although he rejected the label himself. Following Dworkin, Richard Arneson's equality of opportunity for welfare theory and Gerald Cohen's equal access to advantage theory were two of the most prominent early luck egalitarian theories. Basic principles Luck egalitarians therefore distinguish between outcomes that are the result of brute luck (e.g. misfortunes in genetic makeup, or being struck by a bolt of lightning) and those that are the consequence of conscious options (such as career choice or fair gambles). Luck egalitarianism is intended as a fundamental normative idea that might guide our thinking about justice rather than as an immediate policy prescription. The idea has its origin in John Rawls' thought that distributive shares should not be influenced by arbitrary factors. Luck egalitarians disagree among themselves about the proper way to measure how well off people are (for instance, whether we should measure material wealth, psychological happiness or some other factor) and the related issue of how to assess the value of their resources. Criticism The position is controversial within some currents of egalitarian thought, and the philosopher Elizabeth S. Anderson has been a vocal critic of it — on the ground that, amongst other things, the fact that something is chosen does not necessarily make it acceptable. An example of this would be a robber offering someone the choice "Your money or your life," which choice some theorists, including Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan XIV: "Covenants Extorted by