Luck Egalitarianism and Democratic Equality - Ethical Perspectives

ABSTRACT. The paper critically examines a series of objections to luck egalitari-anism raised by Elizabeth Anderson in her essay “What is the Point of Equality?”According to Anderson, current egalitarian writing has come to be dominated bythe distinction between choice and brute luck and that (worryingly) strict adher-ence to this distinction will mean treating some people in ways we have other egal-itarian reasons not to want to treat them. A case is made for moving the debate onby adopting a pluralistic view of the fundamental egalitarian impulse that combinesconcerns about the influence on people’s lives of brute luck with more traditionalegalitarian concerns. It is perfectly consistent with pluralistic egalitarianism to saythat someone who faces social oppression or lacks effective access to valued func-tionings should receive public assistance even if not qua the victim of brute luck.

KEYWORDS. Elizabeth Anderson, choice, luck egalitarianism, democraticequality, justice, pluralism.

INTRODUCTION

In her 1999 essay “What is the Point of Equality?”, Elizabeth Andersonargues that much recent normative egalitarian theory operates with a

“flawed understanding of the point of equality.”2 Anderson directs herattack against a family of views she dubs ‘luck egalitarianism’.3 Accordingto luck egalitarianism (LE), we should mitigate the influence on people’slives of brute luck but hold individuals responsible for the foreseeableconsequences of the voluntary choices they make against a background ofequal opportunity. Among the political philosophers Anderson associateswith this view are Richard Arneson, G. A. Cohen, Ronald Dworkin, EricRakowski, and John Roemer.4 This is a motley list and it means that luck

Luck Egalitarianism and

Democratic Equality

Alexander Brown1

University College London

ETHICAL PERSPECTIVES: JOURNAL OF THE EUROPEAN ETHICS NETWORK 12, no. 3 (2005): 293-339.Doi: 10.2143/EP.12.3.2004485 © 2005 by European Centre for Ethics, K.U.Leuven. All rights reserved.

egalitarianism (as defined by Anderson) incorporates (1) differences ofopinion over the right currency of egalitarian justice (Dworkin5 andRakowski6, for example, defend resources, Arneson7 argues for welfare,and Cohen8 supports ‘advantage’ broadly construed), (2) differences ininterpretation of the nature of the distinction between choice and luck(Cohen9 insists that making the right cut is a metaphysical task, Dworkin10

and Rakowski11 argue that it must track the ethical distinctions weordinarily make in our lives, whilst Roemer12 maintains that the society inquestion should decide, through some kind of political process, what itwishes to deem ‘choice’ and ‘luck’), and (3) different beliefs about how,more exactly, we should mitigate the influence on people’s lives of bruteluck (as Susan Hurley13 points out, by itself the luck-neutralising aim doesnot support any particular pattern of distribution; so, whereas Cohen14

says that the proper goal is to eliminate unchosen inequalities, Arneson15

now believes we should try to maximise welfare, with the prioritarianstipulation that gains in welfare are more important the lower the person’swelfare prior to the gain and the luck-neutralising stipulation that gains inwelfare are more important the lower the person’s degree of responsi-bility).

There are a number of strands to Anderson’s assault on luck egalitar-ianism. One strand is that LE permits otherwise unacceptable forms ofsocial oppression. A second is that LE does not call for redistribution tohelp those who are negligent even when their negligence leaves themunable to function as human beings and normally cooperating membersof society. A third and related strand is that LE only justifies paternalisticintervention to prevent social oppression and lack of effective access tobasic human functionings on grounds that are disrespectful to the impru-dent. A forth is that the concern shown by LE for the victims of brutebad luck expresses contemptuous pity rather than genuine egalitarianconcern. Finally, LE demands redistribution over and above what justiceas equality truly demands. The present article examines each of thesestrands but focuses on the first three.

ETHICAL PERSPECTIVES – SEPTEMBER 2005

— 294 —

Luck egalitarians get their name because they believe that inequalitiesresulting from brute luck are morally bad. Yet the idea of choice andresponsibility is also a key feature of the doctrine.16 The basic rationale isthat even though luck egalitarians believe that inequalities can be morallybad, they do not claim that all inequalities are bad. Inequalities resultingfrom personal choice are not in themselves unjust. Cohen summarises theposition in the following terms: “genuine choice excuses otherwise unac-ceptable inequalities”.17 Anderson begs to differ. She maintains that strictadherence to the idea of choice and responsibility effectively means leav-ing some people to suffer forms of oppression and deprivation thatcannot be excused from an egalitarian point of view and luck egalitarianscan only avoid these results by means of disrespectful paternalistic inter-vention.18

It is worth making clear at this initial stage, however, that people canbe more or less responsible for their choices along a number of dimen-sions: people are better or worse decision-makers, have more or less infor-mation to go on, are influenced to a greater or lesser degree by family andculture and choose from more or less equivalent option-sets.19 IfAnderson is to land solid blows against luck egalitarianism, therefore, shemust first clarify the nature of the target (according to the above dimen-sions) in each of the cases she mentions. The fact that she does not alwaysdo this in her article, however, has left Anderson open to the reply – devel-oped in numerous ways by Alexander Kaufman20 – that the conditionsnecessary to support full responsibility are not satisfied in her examples.

In some ways this is the most obvious line of response to Anderson’salleged counter examples because it challenges the misguided assumptionthat luck egalitarians will turn a blind eye to all inequalities that reflectchoice, irrespective of degree of choice and extent of opportunity. But itis not the only line of response open to the luck egalitarian or even themost powerful. Even if we grant for the sake of argument that equality ofopportunity is satisfied in the relevant examples – along with any otherconditions of full responsibility the luck egalitarian might stipulate – there

— 295 —

BROWN – LUCK EGALITARIANISM AND DEMOCRATIC EQUALITY

are other ways for the luck egalitarian to respond and this is what I wantto try to establish here. Before clarifying some of the alternative repliesopen to the luck egalitarian, however, I need first to briefly introduceAnderson’s own interpretation of justice as equality.

Part of Anderson believes that the proper aims of egalitarian justiceare encapsulated by ‘democratic equality’.21 According to democraticequality (DE), everybody is entitled to the capabilities required to evadeoppressive and exploitative social relationships and to live as humanbeings who can pursue their own conceptions of the good and participatein the social, economic and political life of their communities.22

Anderson’s defence of democratic equality is rooted in a contractualistframework, meaning that the aims of egalitarian justice are viewed asthose that can be publicly and collectively willed.23 Her main contentionis that the principles embodied in democratic equality represent the goalsthat can serve as a basis for ‘interpersonal justification’ where this isunderstood to mean that any consideration offered as a reason for apolicy must serve to justify that policy when uttered by anyone else.24

I shall say more about interpersonal justification below.Part of Anderson’s negative case against luck egalitarianism turns on

her claim that strict adherence to the idea of choice and responsibilityentails leaving some people to suffer outcomes that are unacceptable interms of DE. She employs four main examples to build her case. Firstly,she claims that upholding the distinction between choice and luck entailsthat hospitals may, with justice, deny medical treatment to drivers who areinjured as a result of their own negligent actions and escapes this problemonly at the cost of requiring the imprudent to buy insurance, which,according to Anderson, is a type of disrespectful paternalism.25 Secondly,she attributes to LE the consequence that it is acceptable to exclude cer-tain members of the disabled community from public places if they areresponsible for their own disabilities.26 Thirdly, Anderson maintains thataccording to LE the State may withhold disaster relief from people whoknowingly set up production in disaster-prone geographical areas.27


— 296 —

Finally, she alleges as an implication of LE that it is not unjust if non-wage-earning carers are left vulnerable to exploitation, violence, and dom-ination within their relationships with men if they voluntarily chose totake on board certain roles.28

I think that these examples are important because they force luckegalitarians to make clear the role of the idea of choice and responsibilitywithin their normative egalitarian theory. For this reason there is merit inAnderson’s project. If, as Cohen famously suggests, “Dworkin has, ineffect, performed for egalitarianism the considerable service of incorpo-rating within it the most powerful idea in the arsenal of the anti-egalitari-an right: the idea of choice and responsibility”,29 then surely Anderson hasperformed another service by showing that egalitarians should not alwaysinsist on the idea of choice and responsibility. From the fact that egalitar-ians should not always insist on the idea of choice and responsibility,however, it does not follow that egalitarians should never insist on theidea of choice and responsibility and this is what this paper sets out todemonstrate.

The paper argues that Anderson’s counter examples are not decisiveagainst luck egalitarianism for three reasons. The first reason is that manyof the examples fail to show the incompatibilism between LE and DEthat Anderson suggests. I do not claim that these examples cannot becashed out further and in ways that are more problematic for the luckegalitarian. The point, rather, is that Anderson needs to do far more workin fleshing out the purported counter examples. Not everything Andersonattributes to luck egalitarianism can reasonably be attributed to that fam-ily of views.

Even if we accept that LE and DE can run into conflict with eachother in a certain range of cases, however, a second point is that thesecases do not defeat moderate versions of luck egalitarianism. Accordingto Anderson, luck egalitarians hold that “assuming everyone had equalopportunity to run a particular risk, any outcomes due to voluntary choic-es whose consequences could reasonably be foreseen by the agent should

— 297 —


be born or enjoyed by the agent.”30 I disagree with this characterisation ofthe family of views Anderson wishes to refute. The use of the term ‘any’has the polemical affect of committing luck egalitarians even to obviousinjustices; but this is misleading.

Luck egalitarianism can be elaborated in either strict or more moderateways. A strict version of luck egalitarianism specifies an aim (or aims) of jus-tice as equality and says that there can be no deviating from that aim (oraims) to take account of other principles of egalitarian justice. In contrast tothis, a moderate version of luck egalitarianism says that we should try wher-ever possible to achieve the specified aims, but with the qualification that insome cases it is fitting not to insist on the specified aims in order to accom-modate other principles of justice as equality that we also hold to be impor-tant. In this paper I want to try to motivate a moderate version of LE.

Having said this, I freely admit that there can be conflict between LEand DE and that once the conflict has been successfully identified, a plau-sible view is that people’s freedom from oppression and access to valuedfunctionings should take priority over the idea of choice and responsibil-ity embodied in LE. Even if we concede this order of priority betweenelements of DE and LE, however, a third point I want to try to bringhome is that we are not thereby committed to Anderson’s claim that onlydemocratic equality specifies the proper aims of justice as equality. On thecontrary, I shall argue that the proper abstract goal of justice as equality isto achieve a society of equals and that both LE and DE are constitutiveof that end. In other words, Anderson’s examples do not undercut a plu-ralistic conception of justice as equality that combines LE and DE underan appropriate order of priority.

1. ABANDONMENT OF NEGLIGENT VICTIMS

Anderson’s first case involves an uninsured driver who negligently makesan illegal turn that causes an accident with another car in which he (the


— 298 —

negligent driver) is seriously injured. When the emergency services arriveon the scene they learn that the driver was to blame for the accident.According to Anderson’s reading of luck egalitarianism, it is just (if nothumane) on this view for the ambulance team to leave the negligent driv-er at the side of the road to die. Even if they brought him to the hospitalfirst, as soon as it is discovered that he was at fault for the accident andhas no insurance, it would be just for doctors to switch off his respira-tor.31 How can the luck egalitarian regard the resulting disadvantages asanything other than bad ‘option luck’ as opposed to bad ‘brute luck’?32

Anderson objects to this consequence of luck egalitarianism on thegrounds that in a society of equals everybody should have access to val-ued functionings including the ability to function as a human being.According to her, even the negligent uninsured driver should have accessto medical treatment, something the luck egalitarian appears to discount.33

Anderson remains strangely silent, however, on the reason why thedriver has no insurance and this leaves some important questions unan-swered. Did the driver break the law by driving without insurance or washe at liberty to do so? If insurance was not compulsory, did he have theopportunity to buy insurance? What was the cost of the insurance he wasoffered? If his premiums were higher than other people’s, what were thereasons for this? Before taking up the problem of people who choose todrive without insurance, then, it is necessary to examine the prior ques-tion of whether luck egalitarians believe that drivers should be at libertyto choose not to buy insurance if they wish or should be compelled to doso by law and what they consider to be an equal opportunity to buy insur-ance. No reasonable assessment of this family of views can be made with-out answers to these questions.

Suppose that a government newly dedicated to justice as equalitybrings in legislation requiring drivers to buy medical insurance beforetaking to the roads and this legislation incorporates ingenious ways toachieve full compliance. In the first instance, people are required by lawto buy insurance but if they refuse to do so, money is taken directly from

— 299 —


their wages or social security income. In addition to this, suppose thatinsurance companies are allowed to charge different levels of premiumdepending on how careful the driver is and how far society deems carefuldriving to be a matter of personal responsibility. At first glance, theserules seem to satisfy the relevant demands of both LE and DE. On theone hand, drivers must pay to insure themselves against accidents becausethis is a risk they choose to take, and because they are compelled to payex ante the negligent driver must bear the additional cost of his careless-ness in advance. On the other hand, the insurance policies indemnifydrivers against being injured in car accidents no matter whose fault theaccident is, thereby protecting the effective access to valued functioningof negligent drivers as well as more careful drivers. Where do LE and DEdisconnect at this juncture?

At this stage in the argument, however, some might argue that I haveprovided a false representation of Anderson’s position. Anderson appearsto be claiming that the negligent driver is entitled to free medical assis-tance, whereas according to the rules that I have just outlined the driveris required to pay for his own medical assistance ex ante. But in reply tothis it should be stressed that democratic equality, according toAnderson’s own description, “guarantees not actual levels of functioning,but effective access to those levels”.34 Anderson does not always stipulatethe exact form that effective access must take, but the general idea is this:“Effective access means that people can achieve that functioning but onlyby deploying means already at their disposal, not that the functioning isunconditionally guaranteed without any effort on their own part.”35 Thisraises the following fairly obvious question: why should using the meansat one’s disposal to achieve valued functionings not include using some ofone’s own income to pay for insurance if one wishes to drive?

Then again, what is the moral standing of this type if compulsoryinsurance? According to Anderson, luck egalitarians agree that their view“might have to be modified by a significant dose of paternalistic interven-tion, to save the imprudent from the worst consequences of their choices”.36


— 300 —

Nonetheless, she maintains that luck egalitarians are only able to justifycompulsory insurance on the basis of their own luck-neutralising doc-trine.37 What is more, she argues that this justification is problematic froman egalitarian point of view because it fails to express respect for citizens.“In adopting mandatory social insurance schemes for the reasons theyoffer, luck egalitarians are effectively telling citizens that they are too stu-pid to run their lives, so Big Brother will have to tell them what to do. Itis hard to see how citizens could be expected to accept such reasoningand still retain their self-respect.”38

I do not agree with Anderson’s interpretation that luck egalitariansonly have a single way of justifying paternalistic intervention, namely luck-neutralisation. Nor do I accept that the luck-neutralising justification forpaternalism fails to express respect for citizens. Let us start with the sec-ond point. Suppose that every driver has enough money to buy insurancebut without State compulsion some might neglect to do so. How can theluck egalitarian justify forcing such people to buy insurance? In order tomake an informed choice about insurance, a driver must consider theprobability of road traffic accidents, the expense of insurance, how muchmoney he might need to pay hospital bills and what might happen to himif he is unable to pay those bills. He must also have the presence of mindto renew his insurance policy if he decides to purchase one and the self-control to save money for hospital bills if he decides not to do so. A luckegalitarian might argue, however, that such choice-making and choice-fol-lowing abilities are a matter of birth or upbringing and so beyond the con-trol of the agent. According to such a view, paternalistic intervention isjustified as a method of mitigating the influence on people’s lives of bruteluck.39

Anderson objects to this luck-neutralising justification of paternalismon the grounds that it is disrespectful to citizens. I think that this objec-tion merits consideration but is not devastating. There is nothing inherent-ly disrespectful about the luck-neutralising rationale for paternalistic inter-vention, because whether or not the rationale causes insult, shame or

— 301 —


resentment depends on the attitudes people adopt in response to theintervention and these attitudes are themselves contingent. Perhaps somecitizen might be insulted by the implication that he is too stupid to makea prudent choice. Fuerthermore, even though Anderson overlooks thefact that under the proposed legislation no citizens are publicly singled outas lacking choice-making and choice-following abilities, some peoplemight feel ashamed when meeting citizens from other countries wherethere is no paternalism. Some people might even identify with their infe-rior choice-making and choice-following abilities and resent interventionto nullify the difference. Nevertheless, these attitudes do not have to bethe general rule. Far from being insulted, a citizen might just as easily feelgratitude for State intervention because he realises – in his more reflectivemoments – that a policy of intervention mitigates his lesser choice-mak-ing and choice-following abilities. This may adversely affect his self-respect, but he could just as easily look at his life in a more positive light.He might think that he has other qualities besides good choice-makingand choice-following abilities that allow him to stand proudly among oth-ers. He might even disidentify with the unequal choice-making andchoice-following abilities that make his life difficult and resent a govern-ment that does not intervene and allows some people to take unfairadvantage of birth or upbringing to make better choices about insurance.

Even if we accept the point that the luck-neutralising rationale forcompulsory insurance can be disrespectful for some citizens, however, asecond reply is that it is false to claim that this is the only justification avail-able to the luck egalitarian. Not every luck egalitarian that Anderson crit-icises adopts the strategy of justifying paternalism in this way. Rakowski,for example, takes no stand on which reasons should or should not be putforward in defence of paternalistic intervention.40 What, then, are thealternatives to the luck-neutralising justification?

One view is that the main rationale for paternalistic interventionshould be the moral badness of the consequence of leaving individuals tomake voluntary choices as opposed to the duty to mitigate brute luck on


— 302 —

the part of the imprudent. It seems to me that this is something a moder-ate luck egalitarian can fully accept. Remember that a moderate luck egal-itarian is someone who recognises the importance of other egalitariannorms besides his own. He can say this: paternalistic intervention is justi-fied if it forces individuals to bear the costs of their voluntary choices butat the same time safeguards their access to valued functionings.

Is this something Anderson can also endorse? I think she can. In thecase of people who wish to build their luxury vacation homes in areasprone to natural disasters, for example, she asserts, “an egalitarian statecan forbid people from inhabiting disaster-prone areas, or tax people whodo to cover the excess costs of disaster relief.”41 Consider, in addition, thefollowing passage taken from a reply to her critics: “Democratic equalitytakes a more nuanced approach to questions of personal responsibilitythan either barring these considerations altogether or letting them in with-out constraint”.42 True, Anderson believes that egalitarian principlesshould be able to justify people’s lifelong access to valued functioningswithout resorting to the luck-neutralising aim,43 but the present sugges-tion is different. The proposed rationale for paternalistic intervention is tocompel people to pay for the choices they make but at the same timeensure their effective access to valued functionings.

In fact, the possibilities do not end there. An entirely moderate luckegalitarian may be willing to justify paternalistic intervention on thegrounds of non-egalitarian norms. Which other norms? One possibility isArneson’s ‘responsibility-catering prioritarianism’ (RCP). According tothis principle, we should adopt whichever policies maximise welfare, withthe stipulation that gains in welfare are more important the lower the per-son’s welfare prior to the gain and the lower the person’s degree ofresponsibility for his or her present position. This principle combines theluck-neutralising aim of LE with weighted utilitarianism. According tothis view, whether or not we are justified in restricting people’s liberty intaking uninsured risks depends on whether the result maximises people’swelfare where priority is given to those with the least welfare and who are

— 303 —


the least responsible for their situations. Another possibility is Pareto effi-ciency.44 According to this norm, a change from policy P1 to policy P2 ispreferred if as a result of the change at least one person is better off andnobody is worse off. Based on this justification, the introduction of manda-tory insurance is Pareto efficient if it makes at least one person better offwithout making anybody worse off. How might these justifications work?

To be sure, the standard measurement for both RCP and Pareto effi-ciency is gains in people’s welfare and, on the face of it, this might makeit difficult to see how a strong case for mandatory insurance could bemade. The rub is to explain how a person forced to buy insurance is ‘bet-ter off’, given the fact that he would prefer not to buy insurance if he weregiven the choice. This is difficult but not impossible. Perhaps mandatoryinsurance guarantees that a person can meet more rather than less of hispreferences in the long-term. There is also the factor of any insult orshame that might be caused by paternalistic intervention. Arneson notes,however, that this can be outweighed by sufficiently large gains in welfare.In his words, “when paternalistic policy satisfies RCP, the insult and stig-ma cost is outweighed by genuine well-being gains, and is not then inher-ently disrespectful”.45

So far, then, we have this tentative result: there does not need to bea point of disconnection between LE and DE if we can justify paternalis-tic intervention requiring drivers to buy insurance and even if we grant thedisputed claim that the LE rationale for this intervention is disrespectful,the same intervention can be justified if LE is combined with DE or evenadditional non-egalitarian norms.

There is, however, a further problem. The luck egalitarian might insistthat mandatory insurance is far from neutral from an egalitarian point ofview if one takes into account other forms of brute luck that have so farbeen overlooked. On the surface, mandatory insurance is fair because itforces people who choose to drive to pay for that choice and because itforces bad drivers to pay more than careful drivers.46 Nevertheless, theluck egalitarian might insist that it is not always entirely the fault of the


— 304 —

individual whether or not he is a good driver or a bad driver and so thedifference in insurance premiums is unfair. There are various dimensionsto consider – the ability to concentrate for long periods of time avoidingdistractions and tiredness; the competence to make decisive choices onthe road; speed of mental reaction and eye-to-hand coordination; differ-ences in willpower to do with the ability to observe speeding restrictionsand other rules of the road; the number of years spent driving. Fewpeople seriously think that it is easy to separate what is due to choice andwhat is due to brute luck, but it is at least possible that some degree ofdifference in these dimensions will depend on factors that lie beyond thecontrol of the agent. Consider the timid learner driver not yet experiencedenough to make the same decisive choices as a more experienced roaduser. This can hardly be considered her fault.47

Where does this additional complication leave us? The luck egalitarianmight reject forcing drivers to buy insurance from companies operating ina competitive market – where the cost of insurance to the individual driv-er will vary along with the degree of risk – because of their commitmentto the luck-neutralising aim and for the reason that being an inexperiencedor bad driver might not be entirely down to voluntary choice. This pointdoes not, however, rule out all forms of insurance. One solution to theproblem is for the State to pay subsidies to drivers who face high insurancepremiums through no fault of their own. Another solution is for the Stateto institute a social insurance scheme so that it rather than private insur-ance companies sets the premiums (or taxes) for drivers. Under thisscheme, every driver must pay into a scheme from which every other driv-er benefits. In such circumstances, and depending on how the line betweenvoluntary choice and brute luck is drawn, taxes could be adjusted to makethe distribution of burdens more equitable. If it is thought that being a baddriver has more to do with choice than brute luck, then taxes could be col-lected in such a way that the prudent pay less than the imprudent. If it isdecided that being a bad driver has more to do with brute luck than choice,however, then taxes could be levied more equally.48

— 305 —


It seems appropriate at this juncture that we return to Anderson’sexample of the uninsured driver lying injured at the side of the road. Letus suppose for the sake of argument that the driver lives in a societywhere there is a compulsory social insurance scheme for drivers justifiedon egalitarian grounds. Let us suppose also that the driver broke the lawby driving without registering with, and making fair contributions to, thatscheme. What should we do? On the surface, luck egalitarianism seems toimply that the driver has no claim of justice to the emergency medical carehe requires. Anderson would argue that this outcome is unjust and sowould reject luck egalitarianism.

I concede that this version of the example poses more serious diffi-culties for the luck egalitarian, but I also think Anderson moves too quick-ly in rejecting every member of this broad family of views. There may beother ways of catering to the idea of choice and responsibility besidesleaving people to die at the side of the road or switching off their respira-tors once it is discovered they have no insurance.

One strategy is to offer emergency medical assistance to the unin-sured driver with an agreement that he will pay his hospital bills at a laterdate under some suitable repayment plan. Anderson has characterisedluck egalitarians as believing that if a person voluntarily puts his own safe-ty at risk, he has no right to free medical treatment whatever the conse-quences might be for his capabilities. Furthermore, she has attempted toconstruct a situation in which the two fundamental egalitarian impulsesLE and DE run into conflict with each other. It is unclear, however,whether she is successful in this project merely by stipulating that thedriver is uninsured. The uninsured negligent driver may be seriouslyinjured, but this does not preclude the possibility that at some time in thefuture he will be able to work again and repay the debt. In this way we canuphold both effective access to valued functionings and the principle ofchoice and responsibility.

There is a further knot, however. The example can be changed so thatthe uninsured negligent driver will never work again and so will be unlike-


— 306 —

ly to repay the debt. Now the luck egalitarian must consider very careful-ly his commitment to the principle of choice and responsibility, becauseapplying the principle effectively means that the driver will be deniedaccess to medical care.

This final version of the negligent driver objection is the most prob-lematic yet for luck egalitarians and it is devastating when it comes tostrict versions of the view. Even so, it seems to me that a moderate luckegalitarian can coherently respond to this example. He can say this: LE isimportant but it is not the only thing that matters from an egalitarianpoint of view, democratic equality also matters. How does this responsework? According to moderate LE, other things remaining equal peopleshould bear the consequences of their voluntary choices, but whereimposing consequential responsibility means depriving people of accessto valued functionings – such as in the case of the negligent uninsureddriver – responsibility should be waived.

At this stage in the discussion, however, some might say that to adoptthis line of response to the alleged counter example is to accept the prior-ity of DE over LE, something the luck egalitarian is unwilling to do. Whatis at stake here is whether or not luck egalitarians have a flawed under-standing of the point of equality. Thus, if the luck egalitarian accepts thatLE must give way to DE, is he not conceding that he has a flawed under-standing? Not so.

It is worth pausing to clarify what the alleged flaw is supposed to be.There is either a strong or a weak version of the charge that luck egalitar-ians have a flawed understanding. The strong version is this: luck egalitar-ians have a flawed understanding of the point of equality because theybelieve that the proper aims of equality include among them the mitigation ofbrute luck and holding people responsible for the consequences of theirvoluntary choices and this is false. By contrast, the weak version is this:luck egalitarians have a flawed understanding of the point of equality notbecause they believe that the proper aims of equality include the mitiga-tion of brute luck and holding people responsible for the consequences of

— 307 —


their voluntary choices but because they believe the proper aims of equal-ity are exhausted by these goals.

The strong version of the charge is much harder to motivate than theweak and is certainly not supported by the counter example of the negli-gent uninsured driver. Even if one takes the priority of DE over LE as alesson from this case, however, it does not follow that mitigating bruteluck and holding people responsible for the consequences of their volun-tary choices are not proper aims of egalitarian justice. It is just that in acertain range of cases LE must step aside for DE.

The weak version of the charge is easier to motivate. If luck egalitar-ians insist that equality is exclusively about mitigating brute luck andupholding choice and responsibility, then they are renouncing all otherequality norms and are committed to denying aid to the negligent unin-sured driver. This seems unjust. This version of the charge, however,defeats only strict forms of luck egalitarianism, not moderate luck egali-tarianism. Moderate LE says that mitigating brute luck and holding peo-ple responsible for the consequences of their voluntary choices are impor-tant but not the only things that egalitarians should try to achieve.Moderate LE is not susceptible to the weak version of Anderson’s chargebecause moderate LE does not exclude other egalitarian concerns and socan support giving aid to the driver.

In short, the charge that luck egalitarians have a flawed understand-ing of the point of equality is not sustained in the present case either bythe strong version or by the weak version of the charge. Let us move on,therefore, to consider another of Anderson’s barbs.

2. DISCRIMINATION AMONG THE DISABLED

Anderson’s discussion of the faulty driver case does not end here. We arenow asked to imagine that the faulty driver survives the accident but is leftdisabled as a result of his injuries.49 Anderson claims that under a strict inter-


— 308 —

pretation of luck egalitarianism, “society has no obligation to accommodatehis disability”.50 She cites the example of access to public services: “It fol-lows that the post office must let the guide dogs of the congenitally blindguide their owners through the building, but it can with justice turn away theguide dogs of faulty drivers who lost their sight in a car accident.”51

Once again, I find Anderson’s criticism of luck egalitarianism over-done. She baulks at LE because it has the implication that the State canwith justice exclude some members of the disabled community from gov-ernment-owned buildings, whereas DE implies that everybody shouldhave access to public services so that they can function as equal partici-pants in civil society.52 The intended reductio ad absurdum against LE isunsuccessful, however, because LE has no such implication; not, at anyrate, on the terms Anderson describes.

That something is awry with Anderson’s representation of luck egali-tarianism in this case becomes plain if we reflect more closely on what luckegalitarians mean when they say that people should bear the consequencesof their voluntary choices. To impose consequential responsibility on some-one, in this sense, is to hold him responsible for the outcomes of his ownvoluntary choices (or negligence) so that the costs of his gambles do not fallon others.53 As Rakowski puts it, “differential option luck cannot vindicateredistributive taxation”.54 In order to get the argument off the ground, then,Anderson must first show that the negligent driver’s actions created a costand that the only way to prevent that cost from falling on others is toexclude him from government-owned buildings. Consequently, a charitableinterpretation of Anderson’s argument must supplement the story she haspresented with the following two premises: (a) public-owned buildings faceadditional running costs for every extra disabled person they allow to enterand it is unjust for taxpayers to bear additional costs to accommodate thosewho are disabled as a result of their own faulty behaviour, and (b) the onlyway to prevent the additional costs from being borne by society at largerather than the individual is to turn away those who are disabled as a resultof their own faulty behaviour.

— 309 —


Both of these premises, however, are open to reasonable doubt. In replyto (a), it is questionable that public-owned buildings face additional runningcosts for every extra disabled person they allow to enter. In reality most pub-lic buildings already have plenty of staff and facilities to cater for the specialneeds of the blind. Taxpayers pay to heat the entire building not just theparts where the negligent go. Not only is there unlikely to be marginal costsfor helping additional negligent drivers but there is a plausible argumentfrom efficiency that says it would be wrong to let specially trained staff andequipment sit idle. Of course, there could be an extra cost to the post officeif they had to employ specially trained members of staff to stand guardchecking who is congenitally blind and who is blind as a result of faultybehaviour. Anderson cannot point to this administrative cost as a justifica-tion for excluding the negligent driver, however, because this would be toassume precisely what is at stake, namely, whether or not luck egalitarianismimplies that the negligent driver can with justice be turned away.

Furthermore, even if there is a marginal cost for negligent drivers, thecost is likely to be so small as to make premise (b) untenable. Premise (b)says that the only way to prevent the additional costs from being borneby society is to turn away from public buildings those who are blind as aresult of their own faulty behaviour. For this to be the case, it would haveto be true that everybody who is blind as a result of their own faultybehaviour is so extremely poor that he could not afford to pay a modestentrance fee to cover the additional running costs; the only option wouldbe to turn him away. But this is not plausible. There is no reason why aperson injured in a car accident must necessarily be destitute for the restof his life. He might have some savings or income from investments. Hemight have the support of a partner or family member. He might evenhave access to income from charitable organisations.55

I think that the most we can safely conclude from all of this is thatAnderson lights on an implausible example to make her case. In sayingthis, however, one cannot deny that there may be other costs that the luckegalitarian would attribute to the negligent driver which he might have


— 310 —

more difficulty in absorbing himself. The cost of buying lessons in read-ing Braille, specialist audio equipment, adjustments to his house, a guidedog, transport – it seems to me that these are genuine concomitants of thesituation that his actions created. The luck egalitarian would say that suchcosts rightly belong to the negligent driver. Perhaps these counter exam-ples can inflict damage where the post office example could not.

My reply to these alleged counter examples is to note that they mightinflict damage on strict LE but not moderate LE. According to moderateLE, other things being equal we should try to mitigate the influence on peo-ple’s lives of brute luck but hold people responsible for the consequences oftheir voluntary choices (against a background of equal opportunity), where‘other things being equal’ means provided we do not have to violate otheregalitarian principles. This version of LE is not susceptible to any of thealleged counter examples involving disability. The central point is that thepost office should not turn away the negligent driver even if he cannot affordto pay an entrance fee and the department for social welfare should not with-hold funds for lessons in Braille, audio equipment, housing and transportbecause doing so would violate the norm of effective access to functioning(DE). According to this norm, everybody should be able to function as nor-mal human beings and as members of society, which includes being able toundertake ordinary activities at home and in civic spaces.

Let us attempt a summary. Anderson has not been able to show thatthe aims of luck egalitarianism are not among the proper aims of egalitar-ian justice, but she has been able to show that in a certain limited rangeof cases LE must be supplemented with DE in order to produce a plau-sible interpretation of justice as equality.

3. GEOGRAPHICAL DISCRIMINATION AMONG CITIZENS

Another set of cases employed by Anderson to criticise luck egalitarian-ism involves individuals who freely decide to live and work in areas prone

— 311 —


to natural disasters. Here Anderson focuses on the work of Rakowski. In his Equal Justice, Rakowski argues that provided everyone has the sameopportunity to live where they want to live and plenty of informationabout the hazards associated with living in different areas, those whochoose to live in dangerous areas are rightly held responsible for their badoption luck. He writes: “If a citizen of a large and geographically diversenation like the United States builds his home in a floodplain, or near theSan Andreas fault, or in the heart of tornado country, then the risk offlood, earthquake, or crushing winds is one he chooses to bear, sincethose risks could be all but eliminated by living elsewhere.”56

At first sight, Rakowski’s reading of the ethics of consequentialresponsibility seems quite persuasive when applied to such cases. If aperson is aware of the risks of living in a dangerous geographical area, butis prepared to take the gamble, surely he cannot expect others to indem-nify him against disaster. Nevertheless, this interpretation is criticised byAnderson. She points out that at least some people live in areas prone tonatural disasters in order to engage in production from which othersbenefit and so it is questionable whether fairness is served by denyingrelief in the event of disaster. How does this argument work?

In this part of her essay Anderson draws heavily on the contractual-ist framework that, according to her, underpins the aims of democraticequality. Anderson asserts that in framing a just division of labour and ajust division of the fruits of that labour, workers accept “the principle ofinterpersonal justification: any consideration offered as a reason for apolicy must serve to justify that policy when uttered by anyone else whoparticipates in the economy as a worker or consumer”.57 What sorts ofreasons are relevant? According to Anderson, one reason is this: in asociety of equals, workers are “to regard the economy as a system of co-operative, joint production.”58 In the present case, this reason entailsrecognising the intimate relationship between those who live and work indangerous locations and those who consume the products. “In regardingthe division of labor as a comprehensive system of joint production,


— 312 —

workers and consumers regard themselves as collectively commissioningeveryone else to perform their chosen role in the economy. In perform-ing their role in an efficient division of labor, each worker is regarded asan agent for the people who consume their products.”59 For Anderson,therefore, the question of whether or not it is right to offer people com-pensation for natural disasters boils down to deciding which policies canserve as a basis for interpersonal justification and depends, more specifi-cally, on recognising the different roles that people play in the economy.

What implications does this have for people who choose to engage inproduction on the San Andreas fault in California? Anderson contendsthat such people are entitled to federal disaster relief on the grounds that“they live there because other citizens have, through their demand forCalifornia products, commissioned them to exploit the natural resourcesin California”, and because to deny them federal disaster relief would beto invoke a principle “let us be served by occupations so inadequatelycompensated that those in them shall lack the means necessary to securetheir freedom, given the risks and conditions of their work” that cannotsatisfy the test of interpersonal justification.60

I think that Anderson has offered an extremely interesting line ofargument, but one that is controversial to say the least. Let me raise threecounter arguments. The first has to do with Anderson’s assertion thatconsumers ‘commission’ producers to take risks on their behalf and must,for that reason, bear responsibility for the costs. It is questionable to saythe least that consumers commission producers to act as their agents.Consumers merely display a willingness to buy products if the price andquality of those products is attractive to them. It likewise does not followfrom the fact that consumers show a willingness to buy certain goods thatthey enter into any kind of pact to bear the cost of insurance. Of course,sometimes consumers do make large orders and sign contracts with pro-ducers on the basis of which they invest money and produce greater vol-umes of their goods, but this is not always the case; and even when it doeshappen, the responsibilities of the parties are clearly defined at the start

— 313 —


and the cost of insurance may or may not be assigned to the consumer asis agreed. In general, when consumers purchase goods or display a merepropensity to purchase goods they do not agree to pay for any injuries orlosses the producer might have suffered (or might suffer) in the course ofproduction. On the contrary, consumers take it for granted that produc-ers will sell their goods at a price that incorporates the various costs theyare likely to incur in the process of production, including the cost ofinsurance. If the producer is foolish enough not to buy insurance or to sellhis goods so cheaply that he cannot afford to buy insurance, then that ishis lookout.

A second counter to Anderson’s argument is that, as it stands, the testof interpersonal justification appears rather crude. The test appears to dis-count principles that might otherwise seem just, because it requires agree-ment from everyone and this is difficult to achieve. For example, supposea consumer puts forward the following principle: let producers go to workand let us buy their goods as we wish and if they choose to begin produc-tion in hazardous geographical locations, let them not be abandoned, butlet the State intervene to compel them to buy their own insurance inadvance. I must admit that I am uncertain whether this principle wouldsurvive Anderson’s test of interpersonal justification. Perhaps it would berejected by producers. If the principle seems just on intuitive grounds,however, I think that we should not be overly concerned that it might failAnderson’s test. Producers might prefer a different principle – one thatdoes not force them to buy their own insurance – but that does not meanthey are in the right.

A third counter to Anderson’s argument is that there seems to be adiscrepancy in her proposed treatment of citizens within disaster-proneareas. At one stage in her analysis, Anderson contrasts people who engagein production in disaster prone areas (such as on the San Andreas fault)with rich people who decide to build their luxury vacation homes in the same areas.61 Anderson claims, on the one hand, that producersshould not have to bear the cost of insurance because they are engaged in


— 314 —

production and are commissioned to be there by people who purchasetheir products. On the other hand, she claims that people who build theirvacation homes in these areas can with justice be compelled to pay a tax“to cover the excess costs of disaster relief” because they “haven’t beencommissioned by others to be there.”62 This differential treatment seemsunmotivated by Anderson’s own ideal of a system of cooperative jointproduction in which people are collectively commissioned to performtheir particular role in the economy.

To expand on this last point, Anderson sometimes depicts consumersas active participants in the economy, in the sense that they commissionproducers to take risks on their behalf, but she also depicts consumers asinactive participants in the economy: people who build their vacationhomes in hazardous geographical areas have not been commissioned byothers to be there and so must bear the cost of rebuilding their flattenedvacation homes. Nevertheless, surely if producers in California have beencommissioned to be there, this is equally true of people who build theirvacation homes in these areas. They have been commissioned to be thereby people wishing to sell their land and by property developers, agents,architects, construction companies, suppliers of building materials, localshops and by people offering to clean swimming pools and fix householdappliances. In which case, surely it would be more accurate to say thatboth consumers and producers play an equally important role in the econ-omy? This in turn implies that if society has any special duties in respectof insuring people in hazardous geographic locations, then the dutyapplies equally to consumers as well as producers.

What, if anything, can Anderson say to try to justify her proposedpolicy of meting out different treatment to producers and consumers?Anderson might argue that those who choose to begin production in dis-aster-prone areas are likely to be living close to sufficiency, such that theycannot afford to begin production and pay for insurance that protectstheir basic capabilities in the event of disaster, whereas those who chooseto build their vacation homes in these areas can afford to pay for their

— 315 —


own insurance because they are well above sufficiency. According to DE,then, it is crucial that the tax regime should sustain everyone at a sufficientlevel of capability and this implies that only producers are entitled to freedisaster relief.

Some people might argue, however, that this outcome is unjust.Anderson’s proposal is to allow certain people to take risks which theycannot afford to insure themselves against and, in order to uphold suffi-ciency of capabilities, force those who are better off to pay for federaldisaster relief as and when it is necessary. But why must the State allowpeople to run these risks if they impose a burden on taxpayers? If, asAnderson claims, the proper aim of justice as equality is to safeguard suf-ficiency of capabilities, why not forbid poorer people from inhabiting dis-aster-prone areas? Why should taxpayers have to pay for the cost of fed-eral disaster relief if this is not strictly necessary?

Anderson might respond to this by insisting that DE includes therequirement that everybody has access to the capabilities necessary tofunction in the sphere of production and as a practical point some peopleneed access to free federal disaster relief in order to be able to engage inproduction in dangerous areas. I do not deny that this is an important lineof argument, not least because in some cases people might not have theopportunity to begin production on safe land. But then this invites thefollowing crucial question: why do some people lack the opportunity tostart production on safe land? DE effectively means that they will haveaccess to the relief they need, but does it ignore the underlying injustice?

I think that such cases highlight the need for luck egalitarian reason-ing in normative egalitarian philosophy. Even if one accepts Anderson’sbasic premise that in a society of equals nobody should be deprived of thecapabilities required to engage in production, luck egalitarianism can offera richer explanation of the injustices involved. The luck egalitarian can saythe following about the moral difference between people who build theirluxury vacation homes in disaster-prone areas and people who beginproduction in those areas: the difference is that owners of luxury vacation


— 316 —

homes are often wealthy and free to build their homes elsewhere – someof them are attracted by the cheap land and development potential ofhazardous areas, but they can afford to pay more if they want to – where-as people who set up production in these areas are often people with fewor no alternatives and this inequality of opportunity is unjust from anegalitarian point of view.

Luck egalitarians, then, make an important contribution to egalitarianthinking because they require us to take into account not just the bare factof whether or not everyone has effective access to valued functioningsbut also the reasons why some people choose to live and work in areasprone to natural disasters and whether or not they are choosing from thesame set of options. This casts doubt on Anderson’s claim that luck egal-itarianism fails to capture a proper aim of justice as equality. LE says thata rich person who chooses to build his vacation home in a disaster-pronearea because it is cheaper (even though he can afford to build elsewhere)has no claim against others for free disaster relief. On the other hand, LEsays that a Native American living on reservations in the United Stateswith no opportunity to purchase land elsewhere, whose exposure to riskfrom natural disasters (such as flash flood or forest fire) is higher than thenational average, is entitled to disaster relief in order to mitigate his lackof opportunity. LE also says that someone who is born into poverty andunable to start production in safe geographical areas where land is in highdemand is entitled to free disaster relief if he is forced to begin produc-tion in a disaster-prone area and disaster strikes, whereas a person with alarge capital inheritance who chooses to begin production in a disaster-prone area rather than ‘play it safe’ in order to try to maximise the returnon his investment has no right to compensation or free disaster relief ifhe suffers bad option luck.

According to luck egalitarians, then, the right cut is not betweenproducers and consumers in disaster-prone areas but between those whomake a voluntary choice to live or produce in disaster-prone areas againsta background of equal opportunity and those who do so because they

— 317 —


have no other feasible alternatives. According to this view, only the for-mer group of individuals should be forced to pay for their own federaldisaster relief. If we combine this view with DE, however, then we havea case for federal disaster relief for all but with the choice-catering stipu-lation that some people should contribute more in taxes than others topay for that relief.

Some people might insist that this outcome is overly paternalistic.Why not simply allow people to take the risks they want to take?Nevertheless, in reply to this question it can be mentioned that the aim offederal disaster insurance is only to guarantee sufficient capabilities. Thereis no suggestion that people must be required to contribute to a federalinsurance scheme that pays high levels of financial compensation. In asociety of equals, equality should not allow citizens to be swept away byfloods, to be left without food and shelter or to be homeless, but it neednot indemnify them against all their losses. Anderson asserts: “Equalityonly guarantees sufficient relief to get them back on their feet, not to shodthem in luxurious footwear”.63

Bringing all of the above points together, we come to the followingconclusion: LE stipulates that people should bear the costs of their choic-es wherever possible, but it is a further question which choices theyshould be held responsible for and the answer to this question depends inpart on issues to do with DE and ensuring that people have effectiveaccess to valued functionings. DE can be fleshed out in more or lessambitious ways. An ambitious version is that producers are owed disasterrelief because they are commissioned by consumers to take risks. I do notaccept this version for the reasons outlined above. A less ambitious ver-sion, on the other hand, is that everyone should have access to disasterrelief even if some people should deploy the financial means already attheir disposal to pay for it. This version seems more plausible.Consequently, LE combined with this plausible version of DE says this:federal governments should make available disaster relief in order tomaintain sufficiency of capabilities for all citizens but, in addition to this,


— 318 —

citizens should be taxed differently depending on the degree of risk theychoose to take and the level of equality of opportunity they have enjoyed.

Notwithstanding all of this, Anderson might try to argue that the ideaof choice and responsibility embodied in LE still invites difficulties for theview in the case of people who choose to live in hazardous locationsagainst a background of equal opportunity, who cannot afford to pay forrelief at a later date and have flouted laws requiring them to buy insuranceor else contribute to a federal insurance scheme. In these cases it seemsas though the luck egalitarian must abandon people to their fate in theevent that disaster strikes, whereas DE implies that federal disaster reliefshould be made available unconditionally in these circumstances. A prom-ising strategy in dealing with these cases, however, is to emphasise onceagain the lexical ordering between LE and DE. Even though generallyspeaking in a society of equals people should bear the consequences oftheir own choices, in the present case it is more important that thegovernment intervenes to offer disaster relief and in this way uphold DE.

Let us now consider the final set of alleged counter examples.

4. VULNERABILITY OF DEPENDENT CARETAKERS

Consider the plight of those who stay at home to care for their children orelderly family members and do not earn a wage for doing so. In her article, Anderson attributes to luck egalitarians the judgement that societydoes not owe any compensation to non-wage-earning carers if they volun-tarily choose to engage in this type of work against a background of equalopportunity. What is more, Anderson believes that a society regulated bythis principle would leave non-wage-earning carers (who are often depend-ent on male partners) vulnerable to various forms of disadvantage that areunacceptable from an egalitarian point of view.64 As she puts it, “it is notclear whether luck egalitarians have any basis for remedying the injusticesthat attend [women’s] dependence on male wage earners”.65

— 319 —


Which injustices are being referred to at this juncture? Andersonalleges three main types of injustice. One injustice is that because non-wage-earning carers do not earn a wage they are often the victims ofextreme poverty. They lack the income required to function as humanbeings and members of the society, which also has a knock-on affect ontheir children.66

A second injustice is that even if such women manage to make bothends meet, they are often vulnerable to exploitation. Anderson identifiesRakowski as one luck egalitarian who takes a hard line on non-wage-earn-ing carers. In his Equal Justice, for example, Rakowski avers the principlethat if somebody wants to take time out to care for another person, andidentifies with her endeavours, then she has no right to remuneration overand above what the market (including charitable donations) wouldconfer.67 Rakowski cites the example of “the daughter who selflesslydevotes much of her life to her parents and siblings”.68 Anderson inter-prets Rakowski as applying the same doctrine of choice and responsibili-ty to all types of unpaid carers including struggling housewives and singleunemployed mothers.69 According to Anderson, however, the test ofinterpersonal justification requires paid workers to recognise the contri-bution that unpaid workers make to the economy. This means theyshould accept the principle that unpaid work should receive financialrecognition. Anderson believes that the principle “let us spend every daylooking after children, cooking meals, maintaining the home, looking aftersick men so they can return to the workforce, and not be adequately com-pensated for our efforts” cannot sustain interpersonal justification.70

I shall say much more about this argument below, but I think thatcaution is required even at this initial stage in analysing these cases. It isnot obvious that different types of unpaid care-work are analogous. Forexample, compare the selfless daughter who cares for her elderly parentwith the stay-at-home mother who cares for her child. Arguably an elder-ly parent has (or had) some responsibility to pay for the care he or sherequires. If he or she cannot pay, then the selfless daughter might be


— 320 —

inheriting a lack of responsibility on the part of her parent. This is not trueof the stay-at-home mother. Having said that, there are at least some rel-evant similarities between the two cases. The selfless daughter might wellhave been left with the task of caring for her elderly parent by a disinter-ested brother in much the same way as stay-at-home mothers are oftenquite literally left holding the baby by disinterested husbands and absentfathers. The root problem is an unequal division of labour betweenwomen and men that suggests a failure of background justice. Looking atthe problem in this way, however, makes it difficult to see how Andersonis going to be able to substantiate her claim that luck egalitarians do nothave any basis for remedying injustices that attend female dependency onmale wage earners.71 Surely luck egalitarians would not seek to defend thedistributive outcomes of a society in which there is such unequal oppor-tunity? More on this in a moment.

Anderson identifies women’s vulnerability to violence and domina-tion within their relationships with men as a third type of injustice that ispermitted by the luck egalitarian.72 She points out that without independ-ent financial means, such women can lack the real freedom to escape sit-uations that are oppressive. The purported difficulty for the luck egalitar-ian is that his doctrine “implies this poverty and resulting subordinationis by choice and therefore generates no claims of justice on others”.73 Thisshe finds inegalitarian. “The principle “let us assign others to dischargeour caretaking obligations to dependants, and attach such meagre benefitsto performance of this role that these caretakers live at our mercy” can-not survive the test of interpersonal justification.”74 In contrast to this,Anderson defends the policy of socialising some of the costs of depend-ent care through a carers’ subsidy in order to protect women from suchoppression.75 Anderson is not alone. It has been a common feminist crit-icism of theories of distributive justice that in focusing on people’s ‘fairshares’ they ignore problems of unequal power and autonomy within fam-ily structures. Carole Pateman also defends income subsidies for depend-ent carers partly on the premise that it offers women a degree of autono-

— 321 —


my both within the structure of the family and in their interactions withother members of society.76

In order to properly assess this three-pronged criticism of LE it isvital that we have clarity on what is meant by the terms ‘poor’, ‘exploited’and ‘oppressed’. The first term is straightforward enough. Andersonemploys capabilities as the currency of egalitarian justice and defines whatit means to be poor in terms of not having a level of income required tofunction as a human being and equal member of society. The terms‘exploited’ and ‘oppressed’, on the other hand, are moralised concepts andrequire slightly more analysis. As a rough approximation, we can say thatto be exploited is to be taken unfair advantage of, whereas to beoppressed is to be the victim of unjust control or domination. What morecan be said, however, in order to move the discussion further along?

One strategy open to the luck egalitarian is to define exploitation andoppression in terms of voluntariness. According to this definition, to beexploited or oppressed means exactly this: to suffer involuntary disadvan-tage, where ‘disadvantage’ is defined as being taken advantage of or lack-ing control over one’s life. The significance of this definition for the pres-ent debate should be obvious to the reader. If I am the victim of involun-tary disadvantage in the above senses, then the luck egalitarian will saythat I am exploited or oppressed and justice demands that the situation beremedied. If, on the other hand, I have chosen the life that has resulted inmy being disadvantaged in these ways, then the luck egalitarian will saythat I am not exploited or oppressed and, therefore, that there is no caseof justice for society to intervene. In this way the luck egalitarian canendeavour to evade Anderson’s alleged counter examples by adoptingfavourable definitions of exploitation and oppression.77

This strategy of cutting Anderson off at the pass might seem like aslight of hand, but there are independent reasons to think that these areplausible definitions. Anderson wants to focus on cases in which women‘choose’ to be become carers, but these types of cases are rare. One rele-vant factor (highlighted by Andrew Mason78 and echoed by Dworkin79) is


— 322 —

that there are often strong social norms and pressures influencing awomen’s decision to become a carer and this means that the preferenceof the stay-at-home mother can be too much a matter of gender stereo-typing to satisfy the condition genuine choice. In this case, the luck egal-itarian might agree with Anderson that the situation is unjust anddemands intervention. A second relevant factor (emphasised byAlexander Kaufman80) is that full responsibility requires that peoplechoose from roughly equal sets of options. Even though someone froma poor background might choose to become a carer, the choice could bemade from a less than equal option-set and this limits the extent to whichshe can be held responsible for the consequences of her choice. Focusingon unequal option-sets, then, can provide the luck egalitarian with addi-tional grounds for saying that someone is the victim of an injustice thatshould be remedied.

The debate, however, does not end here. Luck egalitarian definitions ofexploitation and oppression do not exhaust the possibilities and it seemsthat other plausible definitions do inflict damage on the view. An alterna-tive combination of definitions is this: to be exploited is to be in a relation-ship with someone else – whether or not the relationship was freely enteredinto – in which the fruits of one’s labour power and emotional energies aresystematically transferred to the benefit of the other person without ade-quate reciprocation or gratitude; to be oppressed is to be denied power andautonomy in a way that is harmful to one’s human flourishing even if onefreely entered into the relationship. Feminists characterise various aspectsof relationships between men and women as exploitative and oppressive inthe above senses.81 So the suggestion is that even if someone chooses tobecome a carer or to enter into a relationship with someone else in a rea-sonably informed way, without making errors in judgement for which sheis not responsible, and from a wide range of acceptable alternatives, she canstill be exploited or oppressed. The mere fact that some of these womenmight choose to become carers or enter into relationships in preference toother options cannot entirely allay the moral bad.82

— 323 —


Of course, the luck egalitarian could stick to his doctrine and rejectout of hand these alternative definitions of exploitation and oppression.Nevertheless, insofar as they are plausible definitions in their own right,this line of response could make the luck egalitarian position seem hope-lessly dogmatic. Suppose, for example, that someone makes an informed,voluntary choice to stay at home to look after her children or to enter intoa relationship with a man who might turn out to be domineering. Giventhe fact that LE treats the disadvantages that result as a matter of person-al responsibility, her disadvantages do not generate a claim of justice onothers. This means that LE permits social relationships that appear, onthe surface at the least, to be unjust from an egalitarian point of view; this,at any rate, is what Anderson argues.

In the light of all of this, I freely admit that Anderson’s criticisms doscore points against luck egalitarianism in this area, but it is important tonote that they only score points against a strict version of the view: aversion that insists the aims of LE are all that matter from an egalitarianpoint of view. In contrast to this, a moderate luck egalitarian can combinehis concerns about the influence of brute luck on people’s lives and theidea of choice and responsibility with other norms of egalitarian justice.These other norms of equality might include norms against poverty,exploitation and oppression, for example, and can be called into play bythe luck egalitarian in the sorts of cases Anderson is raising.

With this in mind, let us consider once again the three alleged injus-tices relating to women and care work. First, consider the claim that LEallows stay-at-home-mothers to fall into poverty. A moderate version ofLE says that even though we should hold people responsible for the con-sequences of their choices we should not insist on this principle if itmeans that people will suffer extreme poverty. To the claim that it is notin itself morally wrong if some people are worse off than others throughtheir own voluntary choice, the moderate version of LE adds this qualifi-cation: but it is morally wrong if some people are so poor that they cannot function as human beings and equal members of society.


— 324 —

Does the luck egalitarian need to sacrifice the idea of choice andresponsibility, however, or might he instead deal with the problem ofpoverty among unemployed carers by shifting the focus away from theclaims of parents to the claims of their children? I think that this is aninteresting strategy, but one that is unlikely to succeed. On closer exami-nation it soon becomes obvious that a strict luck egalitarian cannot escapethe consequences of the idea of choice and responsibility merely by focus-ing on a more deserving group (children), because the issue of choice andresponsibility persists when we consider whose responsibility it is to meetthe claims of children.

To elaborate on this point, suppose we adopt a resource-based ver-sion of luck egalitarianism, according to which every citizen has a right toan equal share of the earth’s natural resources simply by virtue of beingan equal citizen of the earth.83 In order to resolve the problems of desti-tution among unemployed mothers and their children this share could bepaid to unemployed parents. On the face of it, this suggestion seems tobe consistent with the spirit of LE, but it also invites the following criti-cism: why should taxpayers in general have to fund basic dividend pay-ments for newcomers into the world, given the fact that not every taxpay-er has children? Rakowski, for example, remarks: “If new people justappeared in the world from time to time, like fresh boatloads of unwittingsettlers, and did not owe their birth to the actions of present members ofsociety, then the foregoing principles would in fact come into play. Butbabies are not brought by storks whose whims are beyond our control.Specific individuals are responsible for their existence. It is thereforeunjust to declare, as the above principles do, that because two peopledecide to have a child, or through carelessness find themselves with one,everyone is required to share their resources with the new arrival, and tothe same extent as its parents. With what right can two people force allthe rest, through deliberate behavior rather than bad brute luck, to settlefor less than their fair shares after resources have been divided justly? Ifthe cultivation of expensive tastes, or silly gambles, or any other intentional

— 325 —


action cannot give rise to redistributive claims, how can procreation?”84

The idea of choice and responsibility is thus hard to shake off.The luck egalitarian has another trick up his sleeve, however. In an

ingenious argument, Dworkin points out that a choice-sensitive egalitar-ian can tackle the financial problems faced by single unemployed moth-ers by imagining a hypothetical insurance market that structures insur-ance not on behalf of parents but on behalf of their children. The ques-tion is this: how much insurance, and on what terms, would we as pru-dent guardians recommend that children purchase against the possibilityof being born to poor, unemployed parents on the understanding that awage should be offered to unemployed carers and the cost of insurancerepaid by each child at a later date on some suitable instalment plan?85

The beauty of this argument is that even though the insurance schemeaims to mitigate the bad brute luck of the child rather than the parent, ithas the happy result of helping the parent as well as the child. Of course,the argument also depends on a moral justification for paternalistic inter-vention, but this does not seem difficult to achieve. The basic idea is thatchildren require an insurance policy that indemnifies them against thebrute bad luck of being born into poverty where the affects of brute luckcome to the fore whilst children are unable to make decisions for them-selves. How can it be disrespectful to be treated as a child when one is achild?

In the above example, however, the meaning of ‘brute luck’ isstretched to breaking point and glosses over an obvious issue aboutchoice and responsibility. Hillel Steiner has quite correctly observed thatin highlighting the cut between choice and brute luck egalitarians some-times fail to make it clear that there is a three-fold classification of thetypes of factor that can contribute to a person’s incurring adverse conse-quences: “(1) her own doings; (2) the doings of others; and (3) the doingsof nature”.86 This classification raises the following question about thepresent case: which types of factor contribute to child poverty? It is rela-tively clear, I think, that the issue of choice and responsibility will come


— 326 —

back into view when we attempt to answer this question. If the parent isresponsible for lacking the financial means to look after herself and herchild, then the relevant factor is (2) the doings of others and not (3) thedoings of nature. This calls into doubt the fairness of the suggestion thatchildren rather than irresponsible parents should repay the cost of theirinsurance at a later date on some suitable repayment plan. It would not beappropriate to assign the consequence of being born to an irresponsibleparent to brute bad luck if the fault lies with the parent.

Let us take stock. We have seen that the luck egalitarian cannot side-step the idea of choice and responsibility present in his own doctrine,which can favour imposing responsibility on a particular group (parents),merely by shifting the emphasis towards a group that does seem to havea stronger claim to equal resources (their children). The issue of choiceand responsibility comes to the fore when we ask who should bear theburden of providing the equal resources. The luck egalitarian faces thefollowing conundrum: the idea of choice and responsibility implies thatthe parent should pay, but in reality it is the child or society as a wholethat has to pick up the bill. The end result is that luck egalitarians mustsacrifice the idea of choice and responsibility on some level if they are totackle the problem of poverty in an intuitive way: they must defend mod-erate rather than strict versions of the view.

Let us now consider the claim that LE permits the exploitation ofwomen. Can the luck egalitarian deal with this problem in the same wayby adopting a moderate version of the view? The short answer is yes.There is no reason why a luck egalitarian cannot say that men and womenare equally responsible for bringing children into the world and that, assuch, carers have a right to a proportion of their partner’s income inrecognition of the work they do. Not even Rakowski – who generallytakes a hard line on these matters – argues that the opportunity cost ofchoosing to remain at home to look after one’s own children rather thango out to work must fall exclusively on the maternal parent. Indeed, it isperfectly consistent with Rakowski’s overall position for him to endorse

— 327 —


Anderson’s view that true equality requires a shift in social norms so thatmen and women accept an equal role in primary child-care.87

It is perhaps more controversial whether or not the luck egalitarian canaccept the claim that it is morally wrong for society as a whole to benefit from thework of carers without paying for it. I think, however, that insofar as it is plau-sible to define the exploitation of non-wage-earning carers in terms of a sys-tematic flow of their labour power to the benefit of society as a whole withoutadequate reciprocation, then this is something a moderate luck egalitarian canand should recognise and build into his world-view. Combining moderate LEwith other equality norms in this way means that the plight of non-wage-earn-ing carers can be characterised as being morally bad – on the grounds of abroader conception of exploitation, for example – even if they have chosen tobring new children into the world and to stay at home as carers.

Finally, consider the problem of lack of autonomy faced by depend-ent housewives. Contrary to what Anderson intimates, I think that luckegalitarians are not committed to denying financial assistance for depend-ent housewives and can accept the basic idea that women have a right toautonomy as a strong reason for egalitarian intervention. On a moderateversion of the doctrine, even women who freely enter into marriages –knowing the risks they are taking – that they might come to be dominat-ed by their husbands – would nevertheless have a right to income fromthe State if access to that income is necessary to end their oppression inthe home. In short, there is no reason why the moderate luck egalitariancannot join forces with the feminist to condemn a situation in whichsome women’s dependence on male breadwinners leaves them vulnerableto violence and domination within their relationships.

5. TOWARDS A PLURALISTIC VIEW OF JUSTICE AS EQUALITY

With the above replies to Anderson’s putative counter examples I havetried to show that luck egalitarians can agree with Anderson about many


— 328 —

of the inequalities she finds disturbing because, in fact, not all luck egali-tarians are committed to the various implications she falsely attributes tothe family of views. I acknowledge Anderson’s quite correct point thatmore traditional egalitarian political movements have tended to focus onthe plight of those who do not have enough, the exploited and theoppressed.88 But I also think that it is important to see the luck egalitari-anism project in its proper historical context.

The central business of the luck egalitarian literature has been topoint out that even though we are concerned about (and should be con-cerned about) poverty, exploitation and oppression, these are not the onlyinjustices that matter and governments should address other forms ofinequality that have different causes. For example, luck egalitarians arguethat we should take seriously such misfortunes as being born with poornative talents, being handicapped by illness or disability and sufferingfrom unforeseen natural disasters. These difficulties hinder some peopleand not others from pursuing their dreams and thus matter from an egal-itarian point of view. Dworkin expresses the conviction thus: “If some-one has been born blind or without talents others have, that is his badluck, and, so far as this can be managed, a just society would compensatehim for that bad luck.”89 Luck egalitarians, then, questioned the moral sta-tus of brute luck in order to push the envelope of egalitarian thinking andto raise the profile of a range of disadvantages that are not the conse-quence of any human wrongdoing and, therefore, had gone unchampi-oned. Placing emphasis on brute luck, however, does not commit luckegalitarians to the denial of traditional egalitarian concerns. These writershighlight the various injustices that brute luck can create not necessarilybecause they believe that this is the only thing that matters but becausethey believe traditional egalitarian movements have neglected ‘inborn’ and‘natural’ misfortunes.

The alleged difficulty with luck egalitarianism is that where mis-fortunes are not the result of brute luck they can never be unjust on this view(no matter how unjust they might seem). This charge defeats strict luck

— 329 —


egalitarianism but not moderate luck egalitarianism. Moderate luck egalitari-anism concedes the importance of other equality norms, including demo-cratic equality. It is consistent with moderate luck egalitarianism to argue thatsome misfortunes are unjust because they involve oppression or preventpeople from functioning as human beings and where this is the case as egal-itarians we have reason not to hold people responsible for the consequencesof their choices. Putting the same point another way, Anderson’s charge thatluck egalitarians operate with a flawed understanding of the point of equali-ty is not sustained by the counter examples she offers. The strong version ofthe charge says that luck egalitarians are wrong to think that mitigating bruteluck and holding people responsible for the consequences of their voluntarychoices are among the proper aims of justice as equality. Her examples donot support this claim. There are cases in which people suffer disadvantagesas a result of bad brute luck that seem to matter from an egalitarian point ofview, but which are ignored by democratic equality. The weak version of thecharge, on the other hand, says that luck egalitarians are wrong to think thatthese goals are all that matter from an egalitarian point of view. This versiondoes not defeat moderate luck egalitarianism.

In saying all of this, of course, I do not overlook the fact that some luckegalitarians do endorse a strict interpretation of the view. For example,Rakowski writes: “My principal claim is that all inequalities in holdings aris-ing from variations in people’s option luck are morally unobjectionable,provided that no one who wanted to run the risks associated with such lucklacked an opportunity to do so.”90 Nor do I deny that some moderate egal-itarians could have made it clearer that the impulse to mitigate the influenceof brute luck on people’s lives is one impulse among other egalitarianimpulses.91 Nevertheless, from the mere fact that some egalitarians placeparticular emphasis on the choice-luck distinction it does not follow thatevery luck egalitarian is committed to saying that this is the only thing thatmatters from an egalitarian point of view. I do not think that all luck egali-tarians hold a strict version of this view. (If Arneson is a luck agalitarian, forexample, then clearly he is a moderate), nor do I think they should.


— 330 —

In summary, therefore, my position is that the proper aim of justiceas equality is to achieve a society of equals and that both LE and DE areproper aims of justice in that sense. What I am proposing, in effect, is thefollowing pluralistic view of justice as equality: a society of equals is onein which we try to mitigate the influence on people’s lives of brute luck,attribute the costs of voluntary choices to the individuals themselveswherever possible, but at the same time struggle to eliminate extremepoverty, exploitation, oppression and lack of access to valued function-ings. I do not claim this combined list of equality norms to be exhaustive.Perhaps there are other egalitarian principles that some would argueshould be added to the list. Egalitarianism is a house with many rooms.Rather, my aim has been to defend a pluralistic approach to normativeegalitarian theory on the grounds that this type of approach has moreintuitive appeal than either LE or DE in isolation.

While it is true that a pluralistic view such as this incorporates differ-ent principles of equality and I fully accept that these different principlescan pull in different directions in at least some cases, I think neverthelessthat it is possible to make some judgements about priorities on intuitivegrounds. Sometimes we are faced with a choice of whether to insist onchoice and responsibility or to provide access to valued functionings andand in some cases our intuitions do support providing access to valuedfunctionings. Accordingly, if there is a more robust rationale forAnderson’s broad polemic against the luck egalitarian family of views,then it is not that the proper aim of justice as equality is DE rather thanLE but that justice as equality includes both LE and DE where DE canhave priority over LE.

Does this mean that DE is the fundamental egalitarian concern? Notnecessarily. The luck egalitarian might argue that brute luck is the funda-mental egalitarian concern, implying that disadvantages such as insuffi-ciency of capabilities, poverty, exploitation and oppression are only badinsofar as they result from bad brute luck on the part of those who do not have enough, the exploited and the oppressed. Alternatively, the

— 331 —


democratic egalitarian could stick to her guns and insist that bad bruteluck is not bad in itself and we are only troubled by bad brute luck whenit comes in the form of insufficiency of capabilities, poverty, exploitationor oppression. According to this reading, inequality is not intrinsicallybad.

I think that a more promising answer to the above question, howev-er, is to say that it is false to suppose that the fundamental egalitarianimpulse must be one or other of these things. Rather, the egalitarianshould say that both the elimination of insufficiency of capabilities, pover-ty, exploitation and oppression and the mitigation of the influence onpeople’s lives of brute luck have intrinsic moral worth. This means, forexample, that if someone lacks access to the capabilities necessary to func-tion as a human being, this situation is still worrying from an egalitarianpoint of view even if he is responsible for the situation in which he findshimself. It also means that if someone has less income and wealth thanothers or has less capability or even less welfare due to bad brute luck inthe distribution of natural talents (say), this state of affairs is still of prop-er egalitarian concern even if strictly speaking she has sufficient capabili-ties and is not exploited or oppressed.

Summing up these points, a passionate egalitarian might say that thegreatest of evils and worst of crimes is inequality; in the form of brute luckit is an evil and as insufficiency, exploitation and oppression it is a crime,but both are intrinsically bad.

What about the role of choice and responsibility in all of this? I donot deny that most of us think (at least on some level) that it is unfair tocompel the prudent to support those who recklessly or negligently makeno provision for their own health and safety. The pluralistic view of equal-ity splits the difference between strict versions of luck egalitarianism anddemocratic equality on this point. It says that everybody should haveaccess to the capabilities they need to evade exploitation and oppressionand to function as human beings and members of society, but that in acertain range of cases it is fitting if some people are asked to pay more for


— 332 —

this than others. The exact amounts that each person should pay aredetermined by how the cut is made between choice and brute luck.

Paternalistic intervention is also to be justified by a combination ofegalitarian norms. This means that the State should interfere in people’slives to force them to buy insurance on the grounds that we wish to pro-tect their effective access to valued functionings and because we do notwish for them to become an unfair burden on other taxpayers. There isnothing demeaning in this two-fold justification, nor is it necessary toappeal to the luck-neutralising aim.

Where paternalistic intervention cannot fully prevent people fromtaking uninsured risks, however, and where it is impossible to assign costsin line with the idea of choice and responsibility without leaving peopledevoid of effective access to valued functionings, the idea of choice andresponsibility must be put aside in accordance with the order of priorityamong egalitarian norms.

Finally, I should stress that debate about the true nature of the egali-tarian impulse does not end here. Even if she accepts the above replies,Anderson might insist that luck egalitarianism is flawed for other reasons.One set of objections not yet touched upon is that by giving aid to peo-ple for the reason it offers, luck egalitarianism is committed to intrusivejudgements of people’s ability to function and expresses contemptuouspity rather than genuine egalitarian concern.92 Suppose a luck egalitariansociety sets out to mitigate the influence on people’s income of native tal-ent by sending out cheques to those who are untalented. According toAnderson, “general knowledge of the grounds upon which citizens laidclaim to special aid would be stigmatizing”.93 Jonathan Wolff dubs thisthe problem of ‘shameful revelation’.94

This is not an insignificant objection. Even if luck egalitarianism isflawed in the above ways, however, Anderson must demonstrate that thesame problems do not touch her own preferred conception of equality inorder to make good her negative case. Whilst there may be no knock-downarguments on this point, it is nevertheless unclear whether Anderson can

— 333 —


demonstrate this. According to Anderson’s own view (democratic equality),the basis on which the State may intervene on grounds of equality is to helppeople avoid oppressive social relationships and to help them function ashuman beings, members of society and participants in the economy viewedas a system of cooperative joint production. Surely it stigmatises people noless, however, to regard them as oppressed or exploited or unable to func-tion in these ways as it does to regard them as victims of brute luck andlacking in talent.

The solution to the problem of stigmatisation might seem obvious: toprovide unconditional basic income for all rather than income to just afew special cases.95 In a somewhat surprising move, however, Andersonattacks the most prominent defender of unconditional basic income in theegalitarian literature. In his, Real Freedom for All, Philippe Van Parijssupports an unconditional basic income that is non-means tested and paidto everybody regardless of their level of talent and willingness to work.96

Nevertheless, Anderson insists that those who are able-bodied must gainaccess to the income they require in order to function through earning awage or filling some other role in the division of labour.97 The rationaleoffered by Anderson for rejecting Van Parijs’ unconditional basic incomeis, on the one hand, that it would unfairly indulge the lifestyle choices ofthe lazy and, on the other hand, for practical reasons it must be set verylow.98 “Such a low basic income would be enough for beach bums, whomight be happy camping on the beach. But it would hardly be enough forstruggling parents, the involuntarily unemployed, or the disabled, whohave special expenses.”99 These arguments are unexpected because theybring DE much closer to LE.

Nonetheless, as Anderson herself admits, “to administer this system,some limited judgements of individuals’ capacities to function in the mannerrequired need to be made.” She continues: “For those suspected of abusingthe worker’s disability system, some determination must therefore be madeif whether they are actually capable of holding down a job and just malin-gering, or truly disabled or otherwise effectively unemployable.”100 Surely


— 334 —

the process of determining people’s ability to function will attract the sameproblems of intrusion and shameful revelation as dog luck egalitarianism.The State will be forced to ask very personal questions about what peoplecan and cannot do and risks stigmatising those who are unable to work.

Bringing these points together: insofar as the problems of intrusiveand demeaning judgements of people’s ability to function impinge on thepractical application of both theories of equality, Anderson cannot coher-ently appeal to these problems to object to luck egalitarianism.

NOTES

1. I thank Michael Otsuka, Anne Phillips, Alex Voorhoeve, and Jonathan Wolff for usefuldiscussions on many of the arguments discussed in the paper. I am also very grateful to RichardArneson for detailed and supremely insightful comments on an earlier draft.

2. Elizabeth Anderson, “What is the Point of Equality?” Ethics 109 (1999): p. 288.3. Ibid., p. 289.4. Ibid., p. 290.5. See Ronald Dworkin, “What is Equality? Part 1: Equality of Welfare,” Philosophy and Public

Affairs 10 (1981): 185-246; and “What is Equality? Part 2: Equality of Resources,” Philosophy andPublic Affairs 10 (1981): 283-345.

6. See Eric Rakowski, Equal Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991).7. See Richard Arneson, “Equality and Equal Opportunity for Welfare,” Philosophical Studies

56 (1989): 77-93; and “Welfare Should Be the Currency of Justice,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy30 (2000): 497-524.

8. See G.A. Cohen, “On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice,” Ethics 99 (1989): 906-944.9. Ibid., p. 934.10. See Ronald Dworkin, Sovereign Virtue (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000),

esp. pp. 287, 294.11. See Rakowski, Equal Justice, pp. 114-5.12. See John E. Roemer, Equality of Opportunity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,

1998), p. 8.13. See Susan Hurley, “Luck and Responsibility: Part 1,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society,

supp. vol. 75 (2001): 51-72, esp. pp. 60-61.14. See Cohen, “On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice,” p. 920.15. See Richard Arneson, “Equality of Opportunity for Welfare Defended and Recanted,”

The Journal of Political Philosophy 7 (1999): 488-497, esp. p. 497; and “Luck Egalitarianism andPrioritarianism,” Ethics 110 (2000): 339-349, esp. p. 340.

— 335 —


16. Some luck egalitarians define brute luck in terms of an absence of voluntary choice. Forexample, Arneson writes, “It is morally wrong if some people are worse off than others throughno fault or voluntary choice of their own”. See Richard Arneson, “Liberalism, DistributiveSubjectivism, and Equal Opportunity for Welfare,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 19 (1990): 158-194,p. 177.

17. Cohen, “On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice,” p. 931.18. Anderson, “What is the Point of Equality?” p. 287.19. See, for example, Cohen, “On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice,” p. 934.20. See Alexander Kaufman, “Choice, Responsibility and Equality,” Political Studies 52

(2004): 819-836.21. Anderson, “What is the Point of Equality?” p. 288-9.22. Ibid., p. 316.23. Ibid., p. 313.24. Ibid., p. 322.25. Ibid., pp. 295-6.26. Ibid., p. 296.27. Ibid.28. Ibid., pp. 297-8.29. Cohen, “On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice,” p. 933.30. Anderson, “What is the Point of Equality?” p. 295.31. Ibid., pp. 295-6.32. The term ‘option luck’ comes from Dworkin. “Option luck is a matter of how delib-

erate and calculated gambles turn out – whether someone gains or loses through accepting anisolated risk he or she should have anticipated and might have declined. Brute luck is a matterof how risks fall out that are not in that sense deliberate gambles.” Dworkin, “Equality ofResources”, p. 293.

33. Anderson, “What is the Point of Equality?” p. 296. A similar example is raised by MarcFleurbeay. He claims that the principle of equal opportunity would not recommend any medicalassistance to this person if he freely passed up the opportunity of a different outcome. Fleurbeayargues, however, that our ethical intuitions may lead us to consider that he should receive help andthat, as a result, “the equal opportunity principle looks rather primitive”. See Marc Fleurbeay,“Equal Opportunity or Equal Social Outcome?” Economics and Philosophy 11 (1995): 25-55, pp. 40-1.

34. Anderson, “What is the Point of Equality?” p. 318.35. Ibid. Anderson cites the example of work: those who are capable of working for a liv-

ing should gain access to functionings that require income through work.36. Anderson, “What is the Point of Equality?” p. 301.37. Ibid.38. Ibid.39. See, for example, Richard Arneson, “Postscript to Equality and Equal Opportunity for

Welfare,” in Equality, ed. L. Pojman and R. Westmoreland (New York: Oxford University Press,1997), p. 239.

40. Rakowski, Equal Justice, p. 76n.4.41. Anderson, “What is the Point of Equality?” p. 323n.82.


— 336 —

42. Elizabeth Anderson, “Anderson replies,” Brown Electronic Article Review Service, ed. JaimeDreier and David Estlund

(http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Philosophy/bears/9912ande.html, 1999), p. 4.43. Anderson, “What is the Point of Equality?” p. 314.44. Pareto efficiency is not classed as an egalitarian norm here because even though Pareto

efficiency can support changes in the direction of greater equality, strictly speaking no question hasto be answered about whether a change increases equality and in some cases a Pareto efficientchange might result in more rather than less equality.

45. Arneson, “Luck Egalitarianism and Prioritarianism,” p. 345.46. Bad drivers take more risks on the road than careful drivers and astute insurers will find

ways to measure this and increase premiums for bad drivers accordingly.47. I ignore here a further issue to do with whether or not the cost of insurance should

always fall on driver’s themselves as opposed to taxpayers in general, given the lack of opportuni-ty some people have to use other modes of transport. Think of people living in rural communi-ties, for example, who do not have access to public transport.

48. For a more extensive discussion of the various insurance options from a luck egalitari-an perspective, see Rakowski, Equal Justice, pp. 90-92.

49. Anderson, “What is the Point of Equality?” p. 296.50. Ibid.51. Ibid.52. Ibid., p. 318.53. I ignore here well-known problems in defining what it means for an agent’s conduct to

be the cause of his own disadvantages. A crude question is this: would the outcome have occurredhad the agent not acted as he did? Such a constraint, however, does not take us far enough.Suppose the negligent driver did not lose his sight immediately after the crash but stumbled overa table leg whilst recovering at home, falling onto a sharp object and injuring his eyes. To be sure,he would not have stumbled and lost his sight had he not driven negligently, but can we plausiblysay that his negligent driving caused his loss of sight? An alternative question is this: does the out-come follow from the choice in all possible worlds? This constraint seems to take us too far. Insome possible worlds the negligent driver would have walked away from the car accident withouta scratch. Does that mean he did not cause his own injuries?

54. Rakowski, Equal Justice, p. 75.55. A moral or religious zealot might argue that it can be acceptable to turn people away from

government-owned buildings or to discriminate against them in other ways if they are responsiblefor their own disabilities irrespective of whether or not they impose additional costs on others.Surely the most natural way to try to justify this point of view, however, would be to say this: onehas a moral duty to nature and God not to endanger oneself and strong punishments are requiredin order to deter others from taking the same risks. This may or may not be coherent, but whatev-er it is it is not consequential responsibility in the sense defined by luck egalitarians.

The problem of idleness provides another good illustration of this point. Historically sometheorists have advocated punitive measures in dealing with the problem of homeless begging. Inhis proposals for the relief of the poor, for example, John Locke argued that local guardians shouldbe given the power to deal with ‘begging drones’ by sending them to houses of correction or over-

— 337 —


seas. (See John Locke, John Locke Political Writings (London: Penguin, 1993), p. 460.) It seems tome, however, that this proposal takes us far beyond anything the idea of consequential responsi-bility would demand, which is simply that such an individual would not have a claim of justice topublic money. The moral justification must be of a different order.

56. Rakowski, Equal Justice, p. 79.57. Anderson, “What is the Point of Equality?” p. 322.58. Ibid. p. 321.59. Ibid., p. 322.60. Ibid., p. 323.61. Ibid., p. 323n.82.62. Ibid.63. Ibid.64. Ibid., p. 297.65. Ibid., p. 298.66. Ibid., p. 297.67. Rakowski, Equal Justice, p. 109.68. Ibid.69. Anderson, “What is the Point of Equality?” pp. 297.70. Ibid., pp. 323-4.71. Ibid., p. 298.72. Ibid., p. 297.73. Ibid.74. Ibid., p. 324.75. Ibid.76. See Carole Pateman, “Democratizing Citizenship: Some Advantages of a Basic Income,”

Politics and Society 32 (2004): 89-105, esp. pp. 91, 96.77. Roemer, for example, develops a theory of exploitation that puts equality of opportunity to

the forefront. In his essay, “What is Exploitation? Reply to Jeffrey Reiman,” he offers a series of exam-ples of putative exploitation between the owners of the means of production and workers and arguesthat the question of whether or not exploitation occurs depends on whether or not these exchangesresult from any lack of equal access to the means of production. See John E. Roemer, “What isExploitation?” in his Egalitarian Perspectives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 100-2.

78. See Andrew Mason, “Equality, Personal Responsibility, and Gender Socialisation,”Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 100 (2000): 227-246.

79. See Ronald Dworkin, “Sovereign Virtue Revisited,” Ethics 113 (2002): 106-43, p. 137.80. See Alexander Kaufman, “Choice, Responsibility and Equality,” pp. 821-827.81. See, for example, Iris Marion Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference (Princeton, NJ:

Princeton University Press, 1990), chap. 2.82. For the sake of accuracy, one might say that the outcome is an instance of bad option

luck, of how a deliberate and calculated gamble has turned out.83. Perhaps the earliest example of the basic dividend argument appears in Thomas Paine’s

“Agrarian Justice”, reprinted in The Thomas Paine Reader, ed. Michael Foot and Isaac Kramnick(London: Penguin, 1987).


— 338 —

84. Rakowski, Equal Justice, p. 153.85. Dworkin, Sovereign Virtue, p. 339.86. See Hillel Steiner, “Choice and Circumstance”, in Ideals of Equality, ed. Andrew Mason

(Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), pp. 102-3.87. Anderson, “What is the Point of Equality?” p. 324.88. Ibid., p. 288.89. Dworkin, Sovereign Virtue, p. 287. See also G.A. Cohen, “Socialism and Equality of

Opportunity,” in Political Thought, ed. Michael Rosen and Jonathan Wolff (Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 1999), p. 354.

90. Rakowski, Equal Justice, p. 74.91. At first sight, Cohen seems to be an exception to this. In his “On the Currency of

Egalitarian Justice,” for example, he states, “the fundamental egalitarian impulse is to extinguish theinfluence on distribution of both exploitation and brute luck” (p. 908). His use of the term ‘exploita-tion’ in this passage, however, might be misleading. His main interest in the above is not exploita-tion as conceived by traditional egalitarian political movements. He does not discuss here feministarguments about the exploitation of women in the home, who work without reward. Nor does hehave in mind Marxist arguments about the exploitation of workers by the owners of the means ofproduction on grounds of an unequal exchange of value. In fact, Cohen rejects the unequal exchangetheory of exploitation in favour of a theory that reduces the question of exploitation to the moralstanding of the ownership of the means of production. (See G.A. Cohen, ‘The Labor Theory ofValue and the Concept of Exploitation,’ Philosophy and Public Affairs 8 (1979): 338-360; and ‘More onExploitation and the Labour Theory,’ Inquiry 26 (1983): 309-331.) Instead, Cohen insists that weshould eliminate forms of exploitation that occur when people do not bear the consequences of theirown choices. The basic argument is that we should not allow the negligent and feckless to exploitfrugal and hard-working taxpayers. (See Cohen, “On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice,” p. 911.) Ofcourse, none of this shows that Cohen rejects all other egalitarian norms besides his own, but it doeshighlight the importance he places on the choice-luck distinction.

92. Anderson, “What is the Point of Equality?” pp. 289, 302-7.93. Ibid., p. 306.94. See Jonathan Wolff, “Fairness, Respect, and the Egalitarian Ethos,” Philosophy and Public

Affairs 27 (1998): 97-122, esp. pp. 113-5.95. See, for example, Timothy Hinton, “Must Egalitarians Choose Between Fairness and

Respect?” Philosophy and Public Affairs 30 (2001): 72-87.96. See Philippe Van Parijs, Real Freedom for All (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995),

esp. p. 33.97. Anderson, “What is the Point of Equality?” p. 321.98. Ibid., p. 299.99. Ibid.100. Anderson, “Anderson Replies,” p. 5.

— 339 —


Documents

Luck Egalitarianism and Democratic Equality - Ethical Perspectives