## 1. Different Kinds of Luck



Luck is a pervasive feature of human life (Williams 1981, 21). It
appears to arise in (at least) four main ways (Nagel 1979; Statman
1993, 11). First, the outcomes of our actions are affected by luck
(resultant luck). Some months before the Russian invasion of Ukraine
in 2022, it may have seemed prudent to invest in stocks. Someone who
did so may rightly see the ensuing reduction of her wealth as bad
resultant luck. Second, the circumstances in which one acts introduce
luck (circumstantial luck). A person who is offered proper incentives
and plenty of time to deliberate may make a wiser decision than she
would under less favorable conditions; it may be by accident that she
finds herself in the favorable conditions and hence makes the wiser
decision (but see Pritchard 2005, 254-261). Third, luck affects
the kind of person you are (constitutive luck). Genetically, some
people are at greater risk of cancer through smoking than others, and
because of this it makes sense to say that some smokers are lucky to
avoid cancer. Finally, there is luck in the way one's actions
are determined by antecedent circumstances (antecedent causal luck).
Children who grow up in a stimulating environment perhaps become more
motivated than they would in a duller setting; yet children rarely
determine the time and place in which they are raised. When we add up
resultant, circumstantial, constitutive, and antecedent causal luck,
the area of life that is free of luck seems to shrink "to an
extensionless point" (Nagel 1979, 35; compare Parfit 1995,
10-12; Lang 2021; Levy 2014).



Luck that does not affect a person's interests is irrelevant
from the point of view of justice. But luck that does--whether
the interests are characterized in terms of welfare, resources,
opportunities, capabilities to achieve functionings, or in some other
way--certainly seems relevant. People who end up less well (or
better) off than others as a result of luck often ask "Why
me?" (Otsuka 2004, 151-152). For instance, many affluent
people, reflecting on the situation of poor people in poor countries,
would be inclined to think that it is simply the latter's bad
luck to have been born in such countries. They would further assume
that it is their own good luck to have been born in affluent
countries, that they do not deserve their favorable starting position,
and that this makes the inequality unjust. If those who live in poor
countries were in the situation they find themselves in through their
own fault, and not victims of bad luck, no question of distributive
justice would arise. But they are not, and it seems unfair and unjust
that some people's prospects are worse than others' simply
in virtue of birthplace (Caney 2005, 122; for opposing considerations
see Miller 2007, 56-75). The underlying assumption seems to be
that luck-affected differential standings are morally undesirable or
unjust (Arneson 1989, 85; Tan 2012, 149-185; Temkin 1993, 200);
but this assumption calls for philosophical clarification. Given the
pervasiveness of luck, such clarification appears to be required
whenever people end up unequally well off.


## 2. Distributive Justice



It is commonplace to distinguish between retributive justice and
distributive justice. In both cases the issue of bad luck arises, and
offhand it seems that the role one ascribes to luck in one area will
constrain the role one can ascribe to luck elsewhere: if luck raises
questions about the significance of desert in the sphere of
distributive justice, it will probably have similar repercussions
vis-a-vis desert and retributive justice (Sandel 1982, 91-92;
Scheffler 1992, 306). In the present entry, however, we shall focus on
relations between luck and distributive justice.



In fact it will be useful to narrow the focus further to a particular
family of theories of distributive justice--namely, those
involving an end-result principle of justice (Nozick 1974,
153-155). End-result principles entail that one can judge
whether a certain distribution of goods is desirable without knowing
how it came about. The following are well-known principles of this
kind and/or theories giving a central role to them. (a) Crude
egalitarianism, given which it is bad or unjust if some people are
worse off than others. (b) Crude sufficientarianism, given which it is
bad or unjust if some people do not have enough of whatever is the
relevant currency of distributive justice (Frankfurt 1988,
134-158; see also Axelsen and Nielsen 2015; Casal 2007; Huseby
2010; Shields 2012, 2016). (c) Prioritarianism, given which we should
maximize the sum of welfare that is weighted to ensure that benefits
at lower levels of welfare have more weight than those at higher
levels (Holtug 2010, 202-243; Adler and Holtug 2019). (d) The
difference principle, given which it is unjust if the worst off are
less well off than they could be. (Strictly speaking, Rawls himself
says that the difference principle applies to the basic structure of
society (Scheffler 2006, 102-110; compare Cohen 2000,
134-147; Cohen 2008, 116-180), so for Rawls it applies
only indirectly to outcomes. On this understanding, the difference
principle is not, in any straightforward sense, an end-state
principle. Here we prefer to treat the difference principle as one
that applies directly to outcomes.) Finally, there is (e)
utilitarianism, given which we should maximize the sum of welfare.



There are two reasons for narrowing the focus in this way. First, some
end-result principles have been defended on the basis of
considerations about luck. Thus it is often suggested that
considerations about neutralizing luck favor the difference principle
over 'historical' principles of justice, i.e., principles
defining justice in terms of the way a distribution of goods comes
about. No such suggestion has been made on behalf of non-end-result
principles. Take Nozick's entitlement view. On this view, it may
be a matter of luck what people are entitled to, and yet Nozick
explicitly claims that this does not erode the relevant entitlements
(Nozick 1974, 225). Second, many have inserted into end-result
principles clauses that allow for deviations from the prescribed
end-result provided that these deviations do not reflect luck. For
instance, most contemporary egalitarians believe that an unequal
distribution that is not a matter of bad luck for the worse off could
be just. Luck plays no comparable role in historical principles. The
important conceptual point is that, as Arneson puts it, we should
distinguish the "luckist" element in a theory of
distributive justice from the end-result favored by the theory, when
setting aside "luckist" concerns (Arneson 2006;
Lippert-Rasmussen 2018; for different views on how these two
components (do not) cohere, see Miller 2015; Elford 2017).



John Rawls' work explains why the concept of luck has had a
central place in discussions of justice over the last 40 years. In an
immensely influential section of his *A Theory of Justice* he
introduced the metaphors of the social and natural lotteries (for a
brief overview over Rawls' appeal to luck and the legacy of this
appeal, see Knight and Stemplowska 2011, 2-9). The underlying
idea is that every person's starting point in society is the
outcome of a social lottery (the political, social, and economic
circumstances into which each person is born) and a natural lottery
(the biological potentials each person is born with). Rawls says that
the outcome of each of person's social and natural lottery is,
like the outcomes of ordinary lotteries, a matter of good or bad
"fortune" or "luck" (Rawls 1971, 74, 75).
Hence, since one cannot possibly merit, or deserve, an outcome of this
kind, people's starting positions cannot be justified by appeal
to merit or desert (Rawls 1971, 7, 104). It can be seen, then, that
Rawls' social and natural lotteries provide negative support for
his theory of justice. They undermine alternative theories in which
distributions of social and economic benefits deviating from that
prescribed by the difference principle are tolerated (Nozick 1974,
216; Arneson 2001, 76). They also underpin Rawls' claim that a
system of natural liberty--one in which formal equality of
opportunity obtains in that "all have at least the same legal
rights to all advantaged social positions" (Rawls 1971, 72) and
applicants are assessed on their merits alone--is unjust because
"it permits distributive shares to be improperly influenced
by" the outcomes of the social and natural lottery.



Luck also plays an important positive role in Rawls' work. Since
we can regard people's natural talents as a matter of luck, it
is appropriate, Rawls thinks, to regard their distribution as a
"common asset and to share in the benefits of this distribution
whatever it turns out to be." This means that "[t]hose who
have been favored by nature.... may gain from their good fortune
only on terms that improve the situation of those who have lost
out" (Rawls 1971, 101 - this point is put somewhat less
strongly in the second edition of *A Theory of Justice*). This
is exactly what the difference principle, in one of its versions,
says. Moreover, if we assume an independently plausible principle of
redress which says that "undeserved inequalities... are to
be compensated for", and if people's lives are shaped by
undeserved outcomes of the social and the natural lottery, then we can
say that the difference principle "does achieve some of the
intent of the [principle of redress]" (Rawls 1971, 101). (While
it is undeniable that luck plays a role in *A Theory of
Justice*, and that the considerations described above are
congenial to luck-egalitarians, some commentators argue that this role
is exaggerated and misconceived when Rawls is understood in
luck-egalitarian fashion (Scheffler 2003, 8-12, 24-31;
Scheffler 2005; Scheffler 2006; Freeman 2007, 111-142; Mandle
2009, 24-29; Forst 2020). In Section 8, we ask whether the
luck-neutralizing aim can play a positive role in justifying equality,
an issue that is, of course, distinct from the question whether it has
been widely thought to be capable of playing such a role.)



Luck has been examined closely in the writings of successive
egalitarians (Arneson 1989; Arneson 2011; Cohen 2008; Cohen 2011;
Dworkin 2000; Nagel 1991; Rakowski 1991; Roemer 1993; Roemer 1996;
Roemer 1998; Temkin 1993). (While the philosophers mentioned here are
often referred to as "luck egalitarians", not all of them
favor this label (e.g., Dworkin 2003, 192; cp. Arneson 2018)). Ronald
Dworkin holds that differences in wealth generated by differences
"traceable to genetic luck" (Dworkin 2000, 92) are unfair.
He describes a hypothetical insurance device which, on the one hand,
neutralizes "the effects of differential talents" (Dworkin
2000, 91) and, on the other hand, is insensitive to the different
ambitions people have in their lives (Kymlicka 2002, 75-79).
Similarly, G. A. Cohen writes that "anyone who thinks that
initial advantage and inherent capacity are unjust distributors thinks
so because he believes that they make a person's fate depend too
much on sheer luck" (Cohen 2011, 30). In his view, "the
fundamental distinction for an egalitarian is between choice and luck
in the shaping of people's fates" (Cohen 2011, 4).



Generally speaking, sufficientarians do not incorporate a
"luckist" element into their views about distributive
justice (see, however, Casal 2007, 322). A sufficientarian theory that
does so might say, e.g., that it is unjust if some people do not have
enough through no fault or choice of their own
("luck-sufficientarianism", we might call this view). The
reason sufficientarians tend not to endorse some such view is that
they believe that people are entitled to a certain minimum, however
they exercise their responsibility.



Luck is also appealed to by some who believe that benefits matter
more, morally speaking, the worse off those to whom the benefits
accrue are. Thus Richard J. Arneson has defended a version of
prioritarianism accommodating the "generic egalitarian
intuition" that "fortunate individuals should give up
resources to improve the life prospects of those whose initial
conditions are unpropitious [i.e., the upshot of bad luck]"
(Arneson 1999, 227). According to this view, "the moral value of
achieving a gain (avoiding a loss) for a person" is
"greater, the lower the person's lifetime expectation of
well-being prior to receipt of the benefit (avoidance of the
loss)" and "greater, the larger the degree to which the
person deserves this gain (loss avoidance)" (Arneson 1999,
239-240).



Finally, while no one has argued that utilitarianism is grounded in
reflections on luck, it has certainly been argued that non-luck
considerations *qualify* our obligation to maximize welfare.
Fred Feldman, for instance, defends a version of consequentialism that
adjusts utility for justice on the basis that a pleasure is more
valuable if it is deserved and less valuable, or perhaps even
disvaluable, if it is undeserved (Feldman 1997). Given an appropriate
account of desert, this position might be looked upon as
luck-utilitarianism (or luck-consequentialism). On one version of this
kind of view (one differing from Feldman's), the moral value of
an outcome always increases with increasing welfare for individuals.
But as is the case with Arneson's responsibility-sensitive
prioritarianism, on this view the moral value of an extra unit of
welfare to a person is "greater, the larger the degree to which
the person deserves this gain (loss avoidance)."


## 3. Thin Luck



The concept of luck is a curious one (Dennett 1984, 92; see also
Pritchard 2005, 125-133; Pritchard and Whittington 2015). To
avoid various pitfalls, it helps to distinguish thin and thick notions
of luck (as suggested by Hurley 2002, 79-80; Hurley 2003,
107-109; Vallentyne 2006, 434). To say that
something--whether a choice or an outcome (other than choice)
(Olsaretti 2009; Scheffler 2003, 18-19)--is a matter of
*thin* luck for someone is to say merely that this person does
not stand in a certain moral relationship to a certain object, where
such moral relationship essentially involves this individual in his or
her capacity as a rational agent. To say that something is a matter of
thick luck is to say this *and* to commit oneself to a certain
account of the non-moral properties in virtue of which this moral
relationship obtains. Accordingly, a thick concept of luck is a more
specific version of the corresponding thin concept of luck. In either
case, to say that something is a matter of luck for someone, in the
sense of "luck" that is relevant to justice, is to imply
that it affects this person's interests for good or bad (see,
however, Sher's discussion (2014, 20-34) of whether the
relevant objection to luck applies to people's absolute or
comparative distributive positions).



There are several varieties of thin notions of luck. One is the
following kind of responsibility luck:


1. *Y* is a matter of luck for *X* if, and only if,
*X* is not morally responsible for *Y*.



In this definition, like those set out below, "*X*"
ranges over individuals and "*Y*" ranges over items
that can be a matter of luck for an individual, e.g., events, states
of affairs, personality traits, actions, omissions, and much else. A
number of views about what makes an agent responsible for something
have been taken (for overviews, see Matravers 2007, 14-64;
Talbert 2019). On responsibility for actions (and omissions), (a) some
emphasize the role of the ability to act otherwise (Ayer 1982; Moore
1912), (b) others focus on whether an act is appropriately related to
the agent's real self (Frankfurt 1988; Watson 1982), and (c) yet
others think that what matters is whether the agent acted from a
suitable reasons-sensitive mechanism (Fischer and Ravizza 1998;
Fischer 2006). To say that an outcome conforms to (1) is to remain
neutral on which of these accounts is correct. (It has become common
to distinguish between attributive and substantive responsibility
(Scanlon 1999, 248-251; Scanlon 2006, 72-80). The former
concerns what comprises a suitable basis for moral appraisal of an
agent. The latter concerns what people are required to do for one
another. While the issue of luck arises in relation to both senses of
responsibility, ultimately it is the latter which, ultimately, is
crucial to distributive justice, even though moral appraisal of people
and their actions might have implications for what they owe one
another.)



Thin notions of luck need not be notions of responsibility luck. Thus
the following notion of desert luck is thin:


2. *Y* is a matter of thin luck for *X* if, and only
if, it is not the case that *X* deserves *Y*.



As with responsibility, a number of views about what makes an agent
deserving are possible (Kagan 2012, 6-7; Sher 1987, 7). Some
accounts hold the basis of desert to be the value of one's
contribution, while others hold the desert basis to be one's
level of effort. People who think that justice should neutralize the
luck specified by (2) can disagree over these accounts.



It is worth emphasizing that thin responsibility luck and thin desert
luck are independent of one another. First, *X* may be
responsible for *Y* and yet not deserve *Y*. Thus a man
who heroically throws himself on to a grenade to save his comrades,
thereby losing his life, is responsible for his own death--indeed
this is what makes his act praiseworthy--even if he did not
deserve to die. Second, *X* may deserve *Y* without
being responsible for *Y*. Thus a poor saint who stumbles,
entirely fortuitously, upon a gold nugget might deserve (in the wider
scheme of things) to be enriched by his discovery even though he is
not responsible for making it.



Other thin notions of luck can be described, but thin desert luck and
(especially) thin responsibility luck have received the lion's
share of attention in the literature on distributive justice. While
clearly different, they are occasionally conflated (as pointed out in
Hurley 2003, 191-95).


## 4. Thick Luck



The claim that something is a matter of thin responsibility luck can
be combined with various accounts of responsibility and thus various
accounts of luck. It is these latter accounts--*thick*
accounts of responsibility luck--that tell us what makes a person
responsible for something. On the thick, control-based account of
responsibility luck:


3. *Y* is a matter of luck for *X* if, and only if, (i)
*X* is not responsible for *Y*; and (ii) *X* is
not responsible for *Y* if, and only if, *X* does not
and did not control *Y* (Otsuka 2002, 40; Sher 2014,
22-23; Zimmerman 1993, 219).



A competing thick, choice-based account of responsibility luck
says:


4. *Y* is a matter of luck for *X* if, and only if, (i)
*X* is not responsible for *Y*; and (ii) *X* is
not responsible for *Y* if, and only if, *Y* is not, in
an appropriate way, the result of a choice made by *X* (cf.
Cohen 2011, 13).



To see how these control-based and choice-based notions diverge,
consider a Frankfurtian scenario in which *Y* comes about as a
result of *X*'s choice, but *X* did not control
whether *Y* came about because had *X* not chosen to
bring about *Y*, then *Y* would have been realized
through some alternative causal means (Frankfurt 1988). Conversely, in
a case in which *X* fails to make up his mind whether to
prevent *Y* coming about and then finds he can no longer
control the outcome, it might be said that *Y* does not come
about as a result of *X*'s choice even if *X*
controlled *Y*.



Often it makes a crucial difference which items *Y* ranges over
(see Cohen 2011, 25, 93; Price 1999). Suppose, for instance, that a
person deliberately, and in full control, cultivates a preference for
spending leisure hours driving about in her car reasonably foreseeing
that the prices of gas will stay low (Arneson 1990, 186).
Unfortunately, and unpredictably, the price of gas skyrockets and her
preference becomes very costly. In this case, the fact that this
person prefers to spend her leisure hours driving her car is neither
bad control luck, nor bad choice luck. However, the fact that she is
worse off as a result of her preference may be both, since she neither
chose to act in such way to make this fact obtain, nor controlled
whether it did. We might say of this person that she had "bad
price luck"



It has been argued that both the control-based and choice-based thick
notions of luck are too broad. Most people neither control nor choose
their religion, yet it seems odd to ask for compensation for feelings
of guilt engendered by religious belief on the grounds that it is a
matter of bad luck that one holds those beliefs (Scanlon 1975; Cohen
2011, 33-37). To accommodate this intuition G. A. Cohen
introduces the notion of *counterfactual* choice. One can
explain this notion with the following claim:


5. *Y* is a matter of luck for *X* if, and only if, (i)
*X* is not responsible for *Y*; and (ii) *X* is
not responsible for *Y* if, and only if, *Y* is not the
result of a choice made by *X* and *X* would not choose
*Y* if *X* could.



Given the opportunity to do so, the theist would not choose to be free
of the feelings of guilt engendered by his religious convictions.
Therefore, it is not a matter of luck that he has such feelings and so
justice does not require him to be compensated for the feelings. As
Cohen says, the costs of the unchosen and uncontrolled commitments of
the religious believer "are so intrinsically connected with his
commitments that they" are not bad luck (Cohen 2011, 36; compare
Cohen 2011, 88; Sher 2014, 64-66).



Just as there are different accounts of thick responsibility luck,
there are different accounts of thick desert luck (for a recent
discussion of the relation between luck egalitarianism and desert, see
Brouwer and Mulligan 2019). These correspond to competing accounts of
the basis of desert. One notion is that of thick, non-comparative
desert luck, which can be elaborated as follows:


6. *Y* is a matter of luck for *X* if, and only if, (i)
it is not the case that *X* deserves *Y*; and (ii)
*X* deserves *Y* if, and only if, it is fitting that
*X* has *Y* given the moral or prudential merits of
*X*.



The notion fleshed out here contrasts with that of thick, comparative
desert luck:


7. *Y* is a matter of luck for *X* if, and only if, (i)
it is not the case that *X* deserves *Y*; and (ii)
*X* deserves *Y* if, and only if, it is fitting that
*X* has *Y* given the relative moral or prudential
merits of *X* and *Z* and given what *Z*
has.



It may be a matter of bad thick, non-comparative desert luck that the
crops of a talented, hard-working farmer are destroyed by cold
weather. If, however, the crops of a farmer who is even more
hard-working and talented are also destroyed, it will not be a matter
of bad thick, comparative desert luck that the first farmer's
crops are destroyed.



The list of thick notions of luck mentioned so far is not intended to
be exhaustive, and each notion may of course be developed in several
directions. Clearly, thick luck is quite complex.


## 5. Independent Notions of Luck



Some accounts of luck are neither thin accounts of luck nor aim at
capturing a general moral notion such as responsibility or desert.
Instead they appeal to an independent conception of luck. Lottery luck
is arguably one example:


8. *Y* is a matter of luck for *X* if *Y*, from
the perspective of *X*, is the outcome of a lottery.



The underlying idea here is that there is a sense in which the outcome
of a (fair) lottery is a matter of luck for the person who
participates in it whether or not he is responsible for it--as
some accounts of responsibility imply and others do not. It can be
maintained that justice is concerned with this notion of luck
independently of how it relates to responsibility and desert. Thus an
egalitarian may think that it is bad if people are unequally well off
as a result of differential lottery luck even if he has not made up
his mind whether people are responsible for differential lottery luck.
He might add that it would be illegitimate for the state to enforce
equality in face of inequality resulting from a fair lottery to which
all parties consented. Also, lotteries might be excellent means of
making outcomes independent of the unjust biases of distributors
(compare Stone 2007, 286-287), even if outcomes might be unjust
despite the fact such biases played no role in their genesis.



In principle, one could also care about choice and control luck
independently of how these relate to thin luck, e.g., responsibility
and desert. However, philosophers who think that justice is a matter
of eliminating differential luck have studied choice and control
mainly because they assume that the absence of choice and control
nullifies responsibility or desert.


## 6. How Much Luck is There?



Accounts of responsibility or desert affect how much luck there is in
the world. If, on the one hand, one accepts a hard deterministic
account of responsibility, everything is a matter of responsibility
luck. A hard deterministic account of responsibility says that
responsibility and determinism are incompatible, that determinism is
true, and, hence, that no one is ever responsible for anything. Most
believe that, if hard determinism is true, extensionally speaking,
luck-egalitarianism collapses into straight equality of outcome (e.g.,
Smilansky 1997, 156; but see Stemplowska 2008). If, on the other hand,
one accepts a compatibilist, reason responsiveness account of
responsibility, many outcomes will not be a matter of responsibility
luck, at least for some agents. A compatibilist, reason responsiveness
account of responsibility for outcomes says that an agent is
responsible for outcomes that he or she brings about in the right sort
of way through the agent's actions (or omissions) where these
issue from an action-generating process that is sufficiently sensitive
to practical reasons, e.g., normal human deliberation, and that
actions may issue from such mechanisms whether or not determinism
obtains (Fischer and Ravizza 1998). Still, agents who act from reason
responsive mechanisms may face choice situations that differ much in
terms of how favorable they are in which case inequalities reflecting
such differences may not be just, even if they obtain between agents
who are responsible for the choices they made. For this reason (among
others), it is open for compatibilist luck-egalitarians to think that
little inequality can be justified by differential exercises of choice
(see Barry 2005).



One issue which has received quite a lot of attention in the debate
about justice and luck is the regression principle governing luck:


9. If the causes of *Y* are a matter of luck for *X*,
so is *Y*.



If this principle is coupled with control or choice accounts of luck,
everything turns into luck. For if we couple (9) with, say, the thick,
choice-based account of responsibility luck, it follows that for my
present reckless driving not to be a matter of (bad) luck, it will
have to be the case that I am responsible for, and hence have chosen,
the causes of my present reckless driving. In turn, for me to be
responsible for these causes I will in turn have to be responsible
for, and hence have chosen, the causes of these causes of my reckless
driving; and so on. Obviously, at some point, moving back through the
causal chain (e.g., prior to my coming into existence, if not long
before that), choice, and thus responsibility, will peter out. So it
will follow that I am not responsible for my present reckless driving:
it is my bad luck that I drive my car in a totally irresponsible way.
Generalizing this sort of reasoning, no one would ever be responsible
for anything--that everything would be a matter of responsibility
luck. As Thomas Nagel writes "Everything seems to result from
the combined influence of factors, antecedent and posterior to action,
that are not within the agent's control. Since he cannot be
responsible for them, he cannot be responsible for their
results" (Nagel 1979, 35; compare Strawson 1994; Watson 2006,
428).



The view that everything is a matter of responsibility (and desert)
luck obviously flies in the face of our everyday ascriptions of
responsibility. Accordingly, this implication of the regression
principle is often deployed in a corresponding reductio ad absurdum
(Hurley 1993, 183; Hurley 2003; Nozick 1974, 225; Sher 1997,
67-69; Zaitchik 1977, 371-373). However, this reductio is
perhaps too hasty. It has been argued that the principle (applied to
control) is not simply a matter of "generalization from certain
clear cases." Rather, it is a condition that we "are
actually being persuaded" is correct when we apply it to cases
"beyond the original set", where, on reflection, we find
that "control is absent" (Nagel 1979, 26-27). If
this is right, it seems we need an alternative explanation of why
moral responsibility is absent in those cases where control of causes
is absent. So, for instance, if we agree that a person who offends, as
an adult, as a result of childhood deprivation is not responsible for
his action, we need to explain what, here, nullifies responsibility if
not lack of control over causes of the agent's actions. That is,
we need to explain why certain kinds of causal background to action
threaten control while others do not even if we are dealing with cases
with the shared feature that the agent does not control the early
parts of those causal backgrounds.



Addressing this problem, Fischer and Ravizza suggest that a
"process of taking responsibility is necessary for moral
responsibility" (Fischer and Ravizza 1998, 200). They add that,
since processes are necessarily historical, it follows that their
account of responsibility attends to an action's genesis or
origins. With the same problem in mind, Susan Hurley suggests that
responsibility requires that the process "by which
reason-responsive mechanisms and self-perceptions in relation to these
mechanisms are acquired" (Hurley 2003, 51) is one in which the
agent is equipped with mechanisms that are sufficiently responsive to
objective reasons (Hurley 2003, 51-2). That is, the reasons for
which the agent acts must match the reasons for action that there in
fact are sufficiently well, although this match need not be perfect.
Whether either of these suggestions accommodates cases where,
initially, responsibility seems to be undermined by lack of control of
causes, remains to be seen. 



For a brief discussion of the notion of constitutive luck see the
following supplementary document:
 Constitutive Luck.


## 7. Option Luck Versus Brute Luck



Most observers agree that not all bad luck is unjust.
Luck-egalitarians, for example, often separate option luck and brute
luck and deny that instances of differential option luck are
unjust.



Canonically, Ronald Dworkin explains option luck as follows:
"Option luck is a matter of how deliberate and calculated
gambles turn out--whether someone gains or loses through
accepting an isolated risk he or she should have anticipated and might
have declined" (Dworkin 2000, 73). Brute luck is "a matter
of how risks fall out that are not in that sense deliberate
gambles" (Dworkin 2000, 73). If I suddenly go blind as a result
of a genetic condition, my brute luck is bad, but if I buy a lottery
ticket and win, my option luck is good.


 The availability of insurance provides a link between brute and
option luck. For "the decision to buy or reject [...]
insurance is a calculated gamble" (Dworkin 2000, 74). This means
that a person may suffer bad brute luck, and for that reason end up
worse off than others, and yet the resulting inequality might reflect
differential option luck (see, however, Otsuka 2002, 43-51).
Roughly, this will be so if the person who ends up worse off could
have insured against the sort of bad brute luck that she later
suffered but declined to do so (Dworkin 2000, 74, 77). So although it
may be bad brute luck that I suddenly go blind as a result of a
genetic condition, since the risk of this outcome happening is not one
that I "might have declined", the fact that I end up worse
off as a result of going blind (if this occurs) will reflect bad
option luck, since suitable insurance was available to me and,
accordingly, I might have declined the risk of going blind, becoming
badly off as a result. (This is not to say that suitable insurance
against the risk of becoming blind is possible. I am neither denying
nor affirming that no amount of money can compensate one for the loss
of one's ability to see; nor am I denying, or affirming, that
although some, presumably large, amount of money can compensate one
for becoming blind, the required insurance policy will be unreasonably
expensive. If suitable insurance against the risk of becoming blind is
not possible or possible but unreasonably expensive, it follows that
ending up worse off as a result of this is, to some extent at least, a
matter of bad brute luck.)



Dworkin's distinction needs to be clarified, amended, and
qualified in certain ways (Bognar 2019; Lippert-Rasmussen 2001;
Vallentyne 2002; Vallentyne 2008; Sandbu 2004, 294-299: Otsuka
2002, 45; Steiner 2002, 349; see also Dworkin 2002, 122-125).
First, consider a case where I can choose between two alternatives.
One involves a 75% chance of having one's crop destroyed by cold
weather. The other one involves a 70% chance of having one's
crop destroyed by flooding. In one sense, obviously, either risk is
avoidable. Yet, if one were to go for the first alternative, and if
one's crops were destroyed by cold weather, it would seem odd to
say that the full extent to which one becomes worse off as a result of
that choice is a matter of bad option luck. After all, the chances of
becoming just as badly off via a different causal route, had I chosen
the other alternative, were almost as great. So it seems we should
often think of a given piece of luck as a mixture of brute luck and
option luck where the exact mixture depends on the extent to which one
could influence the expected value of the outcome of one's
choice (see Knight 2021). In the present case, I could only marginally
influence the expected value of the outcome. Hence the disadvantages
resulting from my choice should be seen as mostly a matter of bad
brute luck.



Second, suppose I am morally required to perform a certain action,
say, to save someone from a burning house thereby risking some
moderate burns in the process. Let us also suppose that I am worse off
than the person I save and that my doing so happens to make me even
worse off than this person, since I do get burned in a way that
requires expensive medical attention. While the extra inequality that
results from my doing what I am morally required to do, on
Dworkin's definition, reflects bad option luck on my part, the
view that the resulting extra inequality is in no way unjust is
implausible. In fact, the same conclusion would seem to apply to cases
where the risk of severe burns is so high that one's
intervention is supererogatory and one ends up worse off as a result
of one's choosing to engage in a supererogatory rescue mission
(Eyal 2007, 4; but see Lazenby 2010; Temkin 2003(b), 144).



Third, suppose you and I face a prisoners' dilemma. I know that
there is some chance that you may defect in which case I will end up
worse off. However, because I do not want to exploit you by defecting
myself in case you do not, I cooperate. As it happens you defect and I
end up worse off. Again, since I am now worse off as a result of a
calculated gamble, I am worse off through bad option luck. Yet, it
seems plausible to hold that the inequality that results from your
exploiting my resistance to exploiting you is unjust
(Lippert-Rasmussen 2011; for a different, but, related problem, see
Seligman 2007).



Setting aside refinements to it, in what way does Dworkin's
distinction matter from the point view of justice? We can split this
question into two, one concerning brute luck and one concerning option
luck (cp. Sher 2014, 1). Most egalitarians believe that justice
requires the nullification of all differential effects of brute luck
(Cohen 2011, 5, 29; Rakowski 1991; for a critique, see
Elford 2013), feeling that it cannot be just that some people are
worse off than others simply because they have been unfortunate, say,
to have been born with bad genes. Not all egalitarians, however, take
this position. Peter Vallentyne believes that while it is true that
justice requires compensation for congenital dispositions to develop
serious diseases, this is because justice requires not the
neutralization of bad brute luck but equality of initial prospects
(Vallentyne 2002, 543). This equality obtains between two people when
at some early stage in their development--say, the time at which
they become sentient--their prospects are equally good. A genetic
defect, at this point in time, would limit one's opportunities,
and so such defects will often provide grounds for compensation.
However, if two people face the same initial risk of developing
malaria and have equally good initial opportunities, justice does not
require us to compensate the one who gets malaria as a result of bad
brute luck.



It is an advantage of Vallentyne's approach (over brute luck
neutralizing egalitarianism) that it avoids the costs incurred in
neutralizing the effects of differential brute luck. Of course, such
costs may lower everyone's ex ante prospects. Hence, brute luck
egalitarians are committed implausibly, in such cases, to worsening
everybody's prospects--or, at least, to saying that it
would be better to do so from the point of view of equality even if it
may not be better tout court. However, as Vallentyne concedes, initial
equality of opportunity also raises problems. Suppose we live in a
caste society but make sure that babies are assigned starting
positions in that society by a fair lottery. This society may well
realize initial equality of opportunity, yet it does not seem just
(Barry 1989, 224n). Indeed, it is far from clear that the lottery
reduces the injustice of this society at all.



Turning now to option luck, three positions should be noted. First,
some believe that justice requires the differential effects of option
luck not to be nullified. Dworkin takes this view (Dworkin 2000;
Rakowski 1991, 74; cp. Sher 2014, viii. Dworkin 2002, 114-115
seems to mitigate his Dworkin 2000 position). He thinks it would be
unjust if the state were to compensate people who suffer bad option
luck by taxing people who enjoy good option luck:
"...people should pay the price of the life they have
decided to lead, measured in what others give up in order that they
can do so... But the price of a safer life, measured in this way,
is precisely foregoing any chance of the gains whose prospect induces
others to gamble" (Dworkin 2000, 74). Crucial to this claim is
the notion of the price of one's choices, one reason being that
this might vary considerably depending on the context within which
one's choice is made.



Others believe that justice permits but does not require the
nullification of the effects of differential option luck. Peter
Vallentyne defends this position. According to him, justice requires
initial equality of opportunity, and this can be achieved through a
scheme that provides equality of initial opportunities for advantage
and no compensation for bad option outcome luck. However, initial
equality of opportunity can also be achieved if the state, say, taxes
all good option outcome luck (and all good brute luck) and compensates
all bad option outcome luck (as well as all bad brute luck). This, in
effect, will deprive people of the opportunity to gamble and hence
ensure that everyone ends up equally well off. In Vallentyne's
view, the latter is required by justice when, and only when, this
increases the value of people's initial opportunities, and when
the scheme is introduced publicly and proactively so that people know
the rules of the game before it starts (Vallentyne 2002, 549, 555).
The first of these conditions may be met where people are very risk
averse and the transaction costs involved in the tax scheme are not
very great.



In a third position, justice requires the nullification of some or all
effects of differential option luck (e.g. Barry 2008). This view comes
in several versions. In one, justice requires compensation in some but
not all cases of bad option luck. For instance, Marc Fleurbaey argues
that justice has a sufficientarian component such that it requires
differential option luck outcomes where some people are left very
badly off to be eliminated. Suppose, for instance, that someone
decides to use his motorcycle without wearing a helmet, knowing the
risks involved, and ends up in a traffic accident in which he is
seriously hurt as a result. According to Fleurbaey, justice requires
us to help this person (Fleurbaey 1995, 40-41; Fleurbaey 2001,
511; Fleurbaey 2008, 153-198; see also Huseby 2018; Segall 2007;
Stemplowska 2009, 251-254; Voigt 2007). Those attracted by
Dworkin's position on bad option luck will reply that we confuse
an obligation of justice with an obligation of charity. It would be
unfair for the motorcycle driver to impose costs on us simply because
he prefers to take the gamble of driving without helmet without
insurance. He should pay the price of his decisions (which, of course,
is not to say that he deserves his bad fate). By contrast, friends of
Vallentyne's view might urge that there is nothing unjust about
a system that publicly and proactively declares that bad outcome
option luck will be compensated by means of taxing away good option
luck. Hence, while a refusal to assist the unlucky motorcyclist need
not be unjust, the imposition of assistance costs on others, under the
circumstances mentioned, would not be unjust either.



A more extreme egalitarianism--"all-luck
egalitarianism" to use an apt phrase coined by Shlomi Segall
(2010, 46; for a recent defense, see Knight 2021)--has it that
"differential option luck should be considered as unjust as
differential brute luck" (Segall 2010, 47; cp. Segall 2013,
64-82). For if what really drives egalitarians is the conviction
that people should not be worse off than others as a result of causes
for which they are not responsible, then, arguably, it follows that
differential option luck is unjust. After all, a gambler is not
responsible for the outcome of her gamble being what it is rather than
something else it could have been. This view does not commit its
advocates to the position that the state (or, for that matter, anyone
else) should prevent conduct that might lead to inequalities
reflecting differential option luck: advocates of the view may care
about welfare too and rightly think that welfare is promoted when the
outcomes of gambles are allowed to stand, or they might distinguish
between legitimacy--"the property something has when... no
one has a just grievance against it" (Cohen 2011, 125) and
justice and think that state intervention to eliminate differential
option luck would be ilegitimate even if it would thereby bring about
a less unjust distribution. Again, the claim that differential option
luck is bad is consistent with the view that, given that people do
choose to gamble, it is better, all things considered, if differential
option luck is not eliminated, even if it would be better,
justice-wise, if people had chosen not to gamble in the first place
(Lippert-Rasmussen 2001, 576; compare Cohen 2011, 124-143;
Persson 2006).


## 8. Neutralizing Luck and Equality



Many passages in the luck egalitarian literature suggest that justice
is luck-neutralization, not luck-amplification, not luck-mitigation
(Mason 2006), and not luck-equalization. Consider, for instance,
Rawls' remark that "Intuitively, the most obvious
injustice of the system of natural liberty is that it permits
distributive shares to be improperly influenced by these factors
[i.e., social circumstances and such chance contingencies as accident
and good fortune] so arbitrary from a moral point of view"
(Rawls 1971, 71). On the admittedly disputable assumption that Rawls
thinks that factors that are "arbitrary from a moral point of
view" and affect people's interests are a matter of luck,
one might read this passage as saying that under a just distribution,
luck does not influence distributive shares (Rawls 1971, 72). As we
saw in Section 2 a similar passage can be found in Cohen's work:
"anyone who thinks that initial advantage and inherent capacity
are unjust distributors thinks so because he believes that they make a
person's fate depend too much on sheer luck" (Cohen 1989,
932). This passage can be read as suggesting that the aim of
neutralizing luck justifies equality and that realizing equality will
eliminate luck.



Such passages can, however, be read in other ways. Thus Rawls might
simply mean to say that, while luck influences distributive shares
under a just distribution, it does not do so improperly. Likewise,
Cohen might be saying that, while people's fates depend on luck
under a just distribution, they do not depend on sheer luck. And the
fact that there is room for these different readings encourages us to
ask exactly what role luck-neutralization can play in relation to a
theory of distributive justice.



Addressing this question, Susan Hurley distinguishes between a
specificatory and a justificatory role for the aim of
luck-neutralization. In the first role, the aim specifies what
egalitarianism "is and what it demands" (Hurley 2003,
147). In the second, it provides a justification for favoring
egalitarian over non-egalitarian theories of distributive justice.
Hurley believes that the luck-neutralizing aim fails in both roles. If
the aim were to play either role, it would have to be the case that
the favored distribution--e.g., equality, utility maximization,
or maximizing the position of the worst off--limits the influence
of luck on outcomes. However, there is no clear sense in which this is
the case (compare Parfit, 1995, 12). For the sake of simplicity,
suppose the favored distribution is an equal one. Suppose also that
the inequality that we are concerned with exists between two people
who have each been stranded on a small island. Through sheer good
luck, the first person's island is lush and fertile, and through
sheer bad luck the other person's island is arid. It does not
follow from the fact that this unequal outcome is the result of luck
that, if we eliminate the inequality, the resulting equal outcome will
not to the same degree be the result of luck, i.e., will not be one in
which factors for which people are not responsible play no (or a
smaller) causal role in bringing about the outcome. To see this,
assume we are dealing with thick, control-based responsibility luck
and imagine that a powerful egalitarian intervener dumps a shipload of
fertilizer on the second island so that equality in the Robinson
Crusoe-like setting is realized. Since neither of the two people
controlled what happened, the resulting equality here is just as much
a matter of luck for them as the prior inequality was. Since we can
implement equality without eliminating luck, this shows that we can
neither justify equality as a means of neutralizing luck, nor specify
what equality requires as neutralizing luck. The same applies to other
end-result principles (Hurley 2003, 146-80).



In response to this important point, it might be argued that when
luck-egalitarians write about "neutralizing luck", this is
really short-hand for something like "eliminating the
differential effects on people's interests of factors which from
their perspective are a matter of luck." This is no different
from saying that affirmative action in favor of women is a way of
neutralizing the effects of sexist discrimination. In saying this, we
do not imagine that affirmative action removes sexist discrimination
and all its effects; we mean merely that the affirmative action
program eliminates the differential effects on men and women of sexist
discrimination (e.g., in university admissions). On this reading,
considerations about luck serve, not to justify equality, but to
select the appropriate egalitarian view from among the large family of
views that ascribe intrinsic significance to equality. As Arneson puts
it: "The argument for equal opportunity rather than straight
equality is simply that it is morally fitting to hold individuals
responsible for the foreseeable consequences of their voluntary
choices" (Arneson 1989, 88). Equality is the default position,
morally speaking. It is not justified by appeal to luck. Such an
appeal, however, explains why some deviations from this default
position need not be bad from an egalitarian point of view, for in the
relevant deviations it is not a matter of luck that some people are
worse off than others. In response to Hurley's point, Cohen
offers a related reply: "That it extinguishes the influence of
luck is no more of an argument for egalitarianism than that it
promotes utility is an argument for utilitarianism and in each case
for the same reason, to wit, that the cited feature is too definitive
of the position in question to justify the position in question"
(Cohen 2006, 441-442; see also Vallentyne 2006, 434; Hurley
2006, 459-465). In fact, he goes on to offer something which is
more radical than the short-hand description of the luck-egalitarian
aim offered in the opening sentence of this paragraph. Since
luck-egalitarians are opposed to luck "in the name of
fairness" (compare Temkin 2003(a), 767) and since, no less than
inequality, equality is unfair when "in disaccord with
choice", equality might be unjust for exactly the same reason as
inequality might (Cohen 2006, 444; cf. Segall 2012). Pragmatic, not
principled, reasons explain why unjust equalities tend to not to be
mentioned by luck-egalitarians.



For a further discussion of the notion of bad and good luck, see the
following supplementary document:
 Bad Luck Versus Good Luck.


## 9. Non-Separability of Luck and Effort



A number of luck egalitarian accounts suggest that how much talent
people have is a matter of luck, whereas their levels of effort are
not. Metaphorically speaking, the first is a matter of the cards one
has been dealt, whereas the latter is a matter of how one chooses to
play them. To be sure, it will often be plausible to say that
one's present level of talent reflects past effort, and that
one's level of effort is a matter of good or bad luck (Rawls
1971, 74). Partly for the sake of simplicity, and partly because the
problem about separability will arise whichever way we make the cut
between luck and non-luck with regard to talents and efforts, let us
initially assume that while talents are wholly a matter of luck,
one's levels of effort are wholly a matter of non-luck.
Accordingly, people who have different levels of talent, but the same
level of effort should end up equally well off if we neutralize the
effects of luck, whereas people who have the same levels of talent but
different levels of effort should end unequally well off. More
generally, differences in effort should be reflected in differences in
reward, but differences in talent should not. Under these assumptions
we can easily identify a luck-neutralizing distribution under the
assumption of a constant sum of rewards in the following four-person
case:




Table 1.|  | Actual level of talents | Actual level of efforts | Actual distribution of rewards | Luck-neutralizing distribution of rewards |
| Adam | Low | Low | 10 | 17.5 |
| Beatrice | High | High | 30 | 22.5 |
| Claude | Low | High | 20 | 22.5 |
| Dorothy | High | Low | 20 | 17.5 |



This distribution neutralizes luck (not necessarily uniquely: there
may be other luck-neutralizing distributions). Adam and Dorothy, who
despite different levels of talent put in the same amount of effort,
get the same level of reward. The same is true of Beatrice and Claude.
Beatrice and Claude's levels of reward are higher than Adam and
Dorothy's, reflecting their higher level of effort.



Assume next that level of effort is non-separable from level of
talent. That is, assume that if a group of people's levels of
talent had been different from what they actually are, so would their
levels of effort. Assume that in our four-person case above the facts
are as follows:




Table 2.|  | Actual level of talents | Actual level of efforts | Counter-

factual level of talents | Counter-

factual level of efforts | Actual distri-

bution of rewards | Luck-neutral-

izing distri-

bution of rewards |
| Adam | Low | Low | High | High | 10 | ? |
| Beatrice | High | High | Low | Low | 30 | ? |
| Claude | Low | High | High | High | 20 | ? |
| Dorothy | High | Low | Low | Low | 20 | ? |



It no longer is clear which distribution neutralizes luck. Two
responses seem possible, both of which may have unattractive
implications.



First, suppose we insist that counterfactual levels of effort are
simply irrelevant to luck-neutralization: *ex hypothesi*,
one's actual levels of effort are not a matter of luck, and a
luck-neutralizing distribution should fit the distribution of actual
efforts. This view may fail to capture the full range of
luck-egalitarian intuitions. After all, Adam--if for a moment we
disregard problems about knowledge and indeterminacy in counterfactual
choices (Hurley 2001, 66-69; Hurley 2003,
164-168)--might correctly say that his case is identical to
Beatrice's, and that he was merely unlucky not to be talented.
And given that the cause of their putting in different levels of
effort is simply a matter of luck, how can Beatrice's higher
level of effort justify a higher level of reward for her? In not being
talented, Adam may have suffered from bad circumstantial luck. That is
to say, the circumstances in which he decided on his levels of
effort--his particular skills not being much in demand--may
have ensured that those decisions were less prudent than they would
have been in different contexts. Alternatively, Adam may have suffered
from bad constitutive luck in that he could have been differently
constituted, and had he been so he would have made greater effort.



Second, we might say that actual as well as counterfactual levels of
effort matter (compare Zimmerman 1993, 226). Rewards should match
average effort across different possible worlds. Since Claude's
levels of effort are high whatever his level of talent,
Dorothy's are low whatever her level of talent, and Adam's
and Beatrice's levels of effort varies with their level of
talent, a luck-neutralizing distribution would leave Claude best off,
Adam and Beatrice second-best off, and Dorothy worst off. The problem
now is that people who actually make the same efforts, i.e., Adam and
Dorothy and Beatrice and Claude, are rewarded differently. Beatrice
might complain that her level of effort is as high as Claude's,
and yet he gets rewarded more--and he does so, moreover, not
solely as a consequence of how he actually conducted himself, but
partly as a result of how he would have conducted himself had his
level of talent been different from what it in fact is. When we focus
on thick, responsibility control luck or thick, responsibility choice
luck, it becomes unclear whether this is the right way to neutralize
luck. For, on many accounts of responsibility, what I am responsible
for depends on properties of the actual sequence of events and not on
what I would have done in some counterfactual sequence of events in
which my personality differs from the way it actually is. It appears
that, to reconcile such thick accounts of luck with neutralizing luck
on the basis of counterfactual levels of effort, we would need to
endorse a regressive conception of responsibility on which to be
responsible for something one has to be responsible for its causes.
This would solve the problem of accounting for which distribution
neutralizes luck in that, as argued above, it now seems that the only
distribution that neutralizes luck is an equal one. However, it would
also prevent luck-egalitarians from claiming that people with
different levels of talent should be rewarded differently. Hence,
while the non-separability of talent and effort does not refute
luck-egalitarianism, two ways of resolving the issues it raises
generate further problems (see also Elford 2017b; Miller 2014).


## 10. Relational Egalitarianism and the Critique of Luck-Egalitarianism



Most egalitarians want to compensate people for bad brute luck but not
for bad option luck. Moreover, they have tended to assume that this is
essentially what justice is about. Recently, this attitude has been
criticized as either leaving out of the picture an important
non-distributive egalitarian concern, to wit, an egalitarian concern
for the nature of social relations, or, more radically, as being a
complete misconstrual of egalitarian justice (Anderson 1999; Anderson
2010; Anderson 2012; Scanlon 2018; Scheffler 2003; Scheffler 2005;
Schemmel 2021; for an overview see Fourie et. al. (eds.) 2015).



Jonathan Wolff defends the moderate position that while distributive
concerns about bad brute luck are part of what justice is about, that
is not the whole story: "Distributive justice should be limited
in its application by other egalitarian concerns" (Wolff 1998,
122; cp. Scheffler 2015), for the ideal of justice also includes the
view that we should respect one another as equals. According to Wolff,
this introduces a reason not to strive for perfect equality of
opportunity. For making people equally well off in terms of
opportunity would require "shameful revelations" on the
part of people who must, for instance, pass on to others (and thus
themselves come to terms with) the information that they have no
talent (for a discussion, see Albertsen and Nielsen 2020; Elford
2017a; Hinton 2001; Inoue 2022; Lang 2009, 329-338; Preda and
Voigt 2022; Wolff 2010).



Wolff's point is well made, but luck-egalitarians may be able to
accommodate it. First, insofar as they accept Wolff's factual
observation, they may think that this points to a strong (welfarist)
luck-egalitarian reason not to implement equality of opportunity: we
can know in advance that collecting the relevant information is likely
to make some of those who are already worse off through bad luck even
worse off. Of course, this would not show that *if* we could
collect the relevant information without bad side effects, we should
not aim to compensate bad brute luck alone. Additionally,
luck-egalitarians may simply concede that the pursuit of the
luck-egalitarian ideal is constrained by, or otherwise balanced
against the pursuit of, other ideals, including that of equal respect.
In any case, luck-egalitarians are unlikely to claim that
luck-neutralization is the only ideal, as that would imply that a
world where everyone lives miserable lives is better, all things
considered, than a world where half the people live tremendous lives
and the other half live even better lives.



Like Wolff, Elizabeth Anderson argues that egalitarians believe people
should live in communities based on principles that "express
equal respect and concern for all citizens" (Anderson 1999, 289;
compare Scheffler 2003, 22,31). Unlike Wolff, however, Anderson makes
the more radical claim that (true) egalitarians have, in a way, no
non-instrumental concern about distribution at all: they are concerned
about distribution only indirectly, their direct concern being that
members of the community should stand as equals (compare Scheffler
2003, 22; Anderson 2010). No doubt, to achieve this, large scale
redistribution of income, wealth, etc., might be required, but the
elimination of differential brute luck or for that matter distributive
inequalities per se is not. What is required is the ability of all to
function as equal human beings in civil society and in political
decision making.



Luck-egalitarians, inter alia, question whether this picture is
correct (Barry 2006; Knight 2005; Gheaus 2018; Knight 2009,
122-166; Navin 2011; Tan 2008; Miklosi 2018; but see Kaufman
2004). First, they might dispute the very way in which Anderson
describes the disagreement. They might do so because they think social
standing can be seen as a good, which, setting aside considerations
about responsibility, should be distributed equally from a luck
egalitarian point of view (Lippert-Rasmussen 2015a,b;
Lippert-Rasmussen 2018). If so, luck egalitarianism might be able to
accommodate many of Anderson's concerns. Or they might think
that (most) luck egalitarians and critics like Anderson simply address
different questions. The former ask what constitutes a fair
distribution, whereas the latter asks what we owe one another
(Vallentyne 2015). These are different (though possibly related)
questions, because, arguably, distributions might be unfair even if no
one has failed to do what they owe others, say, if some die young and
others die old, and there is nothing anyone could do to prevent this
from being so (cp. Lippert-Rasmussen 2018; Moles and Parr 2019).
Second, suppose resources are distributed in such a way that equal
functioning in civil society and in political decision making is
assured. Suppose, moreover, that we can choose between two
distributions: one that benefits those who are worse off in terms of
how well their lives go, and another that benefits those who are best
off in terms of how well their lives go. Since this choice will not
affect democratic equality, these options are equally good on
Anderson's account. To many, this is an unattractive implication
of her view. Of course, if the threshold of equal functioning is very
high the problem becomes less serious. However, with high thresholds a
different problem becomes more serious. For if people should be
assured of equal functioning at a very high level irrespective of
whether they act (perhaps repeatedly) in irresponsibly foolish ways,
it will not seem fair to impose the cost of their choices on
others--i.e., the cost of bringing them up to the appropriate
threshold of equal functioning (Arneson 2000, 347-348; for a
reply, see Anderson (Other Internet Resources, 2(e)). Intuitively,
then, the complaint is that democratic equality ascribes no
significance to the fact that responsibility can negate luck. It is
far from clear that concern about equal status overturns the pivotal
belief that justice is concerned with compensation for bad luck (see,
however, Scheffler 2003; Scheffler 2005; Scheffler 2015). Indeed, the
present line of thought suggests that luck-ist versions of the
relational ideal might be more plausible than non-luckist versions.
While much of the relational egalitarian critique of luck
egalitarianism has focused on the weight it gives to considerations
concerning luck, the issue of how this question is resolved is a
different issue from the issue of whether justice concerns
distributions or relations (or both). This is reflected in the fact
that two possible views are outcome egalitarianism and luckist
versions of relational egalitarianism, according to which to relate as
equals the way in which we treat one another must reflect differential
choice, responsibility etc. On the latter view I might not relate to
others as equals if I expect them to bear the costs of my
irresponsible choices.