Reference no: EM133715059

Question: The distribution of material goods and services is not the only economic distribution that is important to people. The distribution of opportunities is also important. As noted in the previous section, John Rawls conjoined his Difference Principle with the principle of equality of opportunity. Endorsement of some form of equality of opportunity is very prevalent among distributive justice theorists and, indeed, among the general population, especially when combined with some form of market distributive mechanism. Equality of opportunity is often contrasted favorably with 'equality of outcome' or strict egalitarianism by those who believe that we can show equal concern, respect, or treatment of people without them having the same material goods and services, so long as they have equal economic opportunities. An equality of opportunity principle, then, is combined with other principles to ensure that the inequalities permitted by the overall theory (whether utilitarian, desert, or a Rawlsian difference principle) are only justified if people have the relevant kind of equal opportunity to achieve greater or lesser amounts of goods. So an equality of opportunity principle allows those theorists who depart from strict equality to capture some of what nonetheless has motivated egalitarians. What is the morally best interpretation of this equality of opportunity principle? has been a significant focus of research (see Equality of Opportunity), particularly among luck egalitarians. In fact, the luck egalitarian ideal (also sometimes known as the 'level playing field' ideal) elevates the role of equal opportunity to the central distributive ideal, so that distributive inequalities are only just when they flow from one's choices or from factors for which one can reasonably be held responsible.

In 1988, Brian Barry gave an interesting reconstruction of the reasoning that led John Rawls to his Equal Opportunity and Difference Principles. Barry's reconstruction and Ronald Dworkin's earlier discussion (which we will come to later) have been seminal in the rise of the luck egalitarian literature; hence, a version of this argument is probably the best introduction to some of the relevant moral issues.

'Formal' equality of opportunity rules out formal discrimination on grounds such as a person's race, ethnicity, age, or gender. What is the underlying concern, shared by most theorists and the general population, with a society lacking formal equality of opportunity? The concern seems to be rooted in the belief that traits such as a person's gender or race are elements over which people have no control, and, hence, a society in which people's race or gender have fundamental effects on their lifetime economic prospects treats people unfairly. In such societies, whether people were born as the favored gender or race, and hence were favored economically, would simply be a matter of luck. Rawls' claim is that structuring a society so that this 'natural lottery' has such fundamental effects on people's lives is immoral when we have the option to structure it another way, with a system of formal equality of opportunity.

The foregoing is relatively uncontroversial, but what made Rawls' (and Barry's) arguments so interesting was their claim that this line of reasoning actually leads to much stronger (and more contentious) requirements for social justice. They note that even with formal equality of opportunity, there will remain many factors over which people have no control but which will affect their lifetime economic prospects, such as whether a person's family can afford to purchase good-quality educational opportunities or health care. A society therefore will have reasons to adopt a more substantial equality of opportunity principle, with equal opportunities for education, health care, etc.-the same reasons it had for adopting a merely formal equality of opportunity principle.

Following this line of reasoning further (and it certainly has appeared to many that we have no principled reason to stop here) seems to lead to more radical conclusions than those who agreed with formal equality of opportunity would have imagined. A society with a more substantial equality of opportunity principle in place will still not be providing equality of opportunity for all. People are born into more or less nurturing families and social circumstances. People are born into families and neighborhoods that are more or less encouraging of education and the development of economically advantageous talents. There is a whole range of social influences that have fundamental and unequal effects on children's economic prospects and for which they are in no way responsible-the influences children are exposed to are a matter of their luck in the'social lottery'. Moreover, the luck of the natural lottery is not just restricted to such characteristics as gender and race. Children are more or less fortunate in the distribution of natural talents as well.

A race where the starting line is arbitrarily staggered, where people's prospects for winning are not largely determined by factors for which they are responsible but rather largely by luck, is not considered a fair race. Similarly, if society is structured so that people's prospects for gaining more economic goods are not largely determined by factors for which they are responsible but rather largely by luck, then society is open to the charge of being unfair. This is the challenging conclusion with which Barry, following Rawls, presents us.

In response to this challenge, Barry himself explores a number of avenues, including questioning whether economic distribution is really analogous to a race. Rawls, of course, responded to his own challenge by arguing that there is not a lot that can be done (morally) to make social and natural opportunities more equal, so the fair response is to adopt the Difference Principle. Others, however, have taken this challenge in different directions.

Ronald Dworkin (Dworkin 1981a, 1981b, 2000) provided one of the most detailed early responses to Rawls' challenge. In retrospect, Dworkin's theory is often identified as one of the earliest in the luck egalitarian literature, though Dworkin himself called his theory Resource Egalitarianism. Dworkin presented his key insight (i.e., what distinguishes him from Rawls) in terms of a distinction between 'ambitions' and 'endowments'. Dworkin uses the term 'ambitions' to cover the realm of our choices and what results from our choices, such as the choice to work hard or to spend money on expensive luxuries. His term 'endowments' refers to the results of brute luck, or those things over which we have no control, such as one's genetic inheritance or unforeseeable bad luck. Dworkin agrees with Rawls that natural inequalities are not distributed according to people's choices, nor are they justified by reference to some other morally relevant fact about people, so people should not end up worse off as a result of bad luck in the natural lottery. However, Dworkin argues the Difference Principle fails to deliver on this ideal since its formulation in terms of primary goods fails to recognize that those who are very unlucky, such as the severely ill or disabled, may need considerably greater shares of primary goods than others in order to achieve a reasonable life. Dworkin also argued that just economic distributions should be more responsive than the Difference Principle to the consequences of people's choices.

Dworkin proposed that people begin with equal resources but be allowed to end up with unequal economic benefits as a result of their own choices. What constitutes a just material distribution is to be determined by the result of a thought experiment designed to model a fair distribution. Suppose that everyone is given the same purchasing power and each uses that purchasing power to bid, in a fair auction, for resources best suited to their life plans. They are then permitted to use those resources as they see fit. Although people may end up with different economic benefits, none of them is given less consideration than another in the sense that if they wanted somebody else's resource bundle, they could have bid for it instead.

In Dworkin's proposal, we see his attitudes toward 'ambitions' and 'endowments', which have become a central feature of luck egalitarianism (though under a wide variety of alternative names and further subset distinctions). In terms of sensitivity to 'ambitions', Dworkin and many other luck egalitarians argue that provided people have an 'equal' starting point (in Dworkin's case, resources), they should live with the consequences of their choices. They argue, for instance, that people who choose to work hard to earn more income should not be required to subsidize those who choose more leisure and hence less income.

With respect to 'endowments', Dworkin proposes a hypothetical compensation scheme in which he supposes that, before the hypothetical auction described above, people did not know their own natural endowments. However, they are able to buy insurance against being disadvantaged in the natural distribution of talents, and they know that their payments will provide an insurance pool to compensate those people who are unlucky in the 'natural lottery'.

Dworkin's early proposals were very hypothetical, and it was somewhat difficult to see what they meant in practice. Later, egalitarians have tried to tease out the practical implications of their theories in more detail, though much of the debate still remains at the theoretical level. They agree with Dworkin's recommendation, against Rawls' Difference Principle approach, that those with unequal natural endowments should receive compensation. For instance, people born with disabilities or ill health who have not brought these circumstances upon themselves can be explicitly compensated so that they are not disadvantaged in their economic prospects. Under Rawls' Difference Principle, though, no such explicit compensation is forthcoming-as Rawls says, the Difference Principle is not the principle of redress (Rawls 1971, 101). Of course, for the subset of people with long-term disabilities or ill-health who are also in the least advantaged group (variously defined by Rawls but most commonly defined as the lowest socio-economic grouping), the Difference Principle will help. But the help will not be proportionate to their needs arising from their disabilities or ill-health.

Luck egalitarians continue to refine such aspects of their theories as (a) what they believe is the relevant conception of equality of opportunity, (b) how much of a role luck should play in the distribution of economic benefits, and (c) what is the best conception of 'luck' (Arneson 1990 and 2001, Fleurbaey 2001, Hurley 2001 and 2003, Swift 2008, Sher 2010). Relatedly, they continue to explore what role responsibility should play in the distribution of economic goods (Sen 1985, Cohen 1997, Valentyne 1997, Knight 2011).

Because the luckiest egalitarian proposals have a similar motivation to the Difference Principle, their moral criticism tends to be variations on those leveled against the Difference Principle. However, as noted above, what is practically required of a society operating under the Difference Principle is relatively straightforward. How the theoretical concerns of luck egalitarians are to be practically implemented is often not so clear. For instance, it has seemed impossible to measure differences in people's natural talents-unfortunately, people's talents do not neatly divide into the natural and those for which people can be held responsible. A system of special assistance to the physically and mentally disabled and to the ill would be a partial implementation of the compensation system, but most natural inequalities would be left untouched by such assistance, while theories commonly require compensation for such inequalities. Exploring how, in practical ways, the economic systems can be refined to track responsibility while mitigating certain types of pure luck will be an ongoing challenge for luck egalitarians.

A different type of challenge has come from theorists who believe egalitarian justice is not wholly, or even primarily, about neutralising or compensating for bad brute luck. (See, for example, Jonathan Wolff, 1998 and 2010, or Elizabeth Anderson, 1999 and 2010.) Such theorists believe the emphasis on justice should be on the expression of equal respect for people and the conditions that will allow for equal social standing or equal political participation. While some distributive measures for counteracting bad luck may be necessary and taking people's choices seriously may be part of respecting them, these theorists worry that the emphasis on how unlucky people are in the natural lottery or what poor choices people have made can run counter to the goal of equal status.