egalitarianism, option luck, and responsibility author(s): kasper … · 2012-08-22 ·...

Egalitarianism, Option Luck, and ResponsibilityAuthor(s): Kasper Lippert-RasmussenSource: Ethics, Vol. 111, No. 3 (Apr., 2001), pp. 548-579Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2675642Accessed: 03/12/2008 18:29

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Egalitarianism, Option Luck, and Responsibility*

Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen

I. INTRODUCTION

As construed by the majority of its current supporters, egalitarianism accommodates choice and responsibility. This is evident from representa- tive statements of the basic egalitarian principle such as: "It is bad- unjust and unfair-for some be worse off than others [through no fault or choice of their own] ." 1 Also, " [Egalitarianism's] purpose is to eliminate involuntary disadvantage, by which I (stipulatively) mean disadvantage for which the sufferer cannot be held responsible, since it does not appropriately reflect choices that he has made or would make." 2 It follows that, for most contemporary egalitarians, inequalities of outcome need not be bad.3

Responding to the idea that choice and responsibility bear upon the badness and justice of inequalities of outcome, many egalitarians treat inequalities reflecting what Ronald Dworkin has called 'differential option luck' as unobjectionable. Suppose you and I voluntarily engage in gambling. You win. I lose. Here I suffer bad option luck. By contrast you enjoy good option luck. Hence, unlike before, I am now (let us suppose)

* This article has benefited from the discussion following its presentation at the Oxford-Copenhagen Ethics Summit at St. Anne's College, October 30-31, 1999. I am also indebted to RichardJ. ArnesonJerry Cohen, Marc Fleurbaey, Karsten KlintJensen,Jeroen Knijff, Ingmar Persson, Eric Rakowski, Paul Robinson, Peter Vallentynejonathan Wolff, an anonymous referee, and the editors of Ethics for very helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article.

1. Larry Temkin, Inequality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 13. 2. Jerry Cohen, "On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice," Ethics 99 (1989): 906-

44, p. 916. 3. I say cautiously, "need [not] be," because some egalitarians explicitlyacknowledge

the possibility that hard determinism is true. If hard determinism were true, all inequalities would, in their view, be bad-see Richard J. Arneson, "Equality and Equality of Opportu- nity for Welfare," Philosophical Studies 56 (1989): 77-93, p. 86; Jerry Cohen, "Equality of What? On Welfare, Goods, and Capabilities," in The Quality of Life, ed. Martha Nussbaum and Amartya Sen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 28. Egalitarians who allow for inequalities in outcomes need not deny that there is something of which people should have equal amounts. It is just that the proper equalisandum is, in their view, a modalized one, e.g., opportunity for welfare or access to advantage.

Ethics 111 (April 2001): 548-579 C 2001 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 0014-1704/2001/11103-0012 $02.00

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Lippert-Rasmussen Egalitarianism 549

worse off than you. Although bad for me, this is not bad regarding inequality, according to Dworkin.i (Of course, there may be something bad regarding inequality about the fact that you are now better off than a third person who had no opportunity to gamble, but let us leave that aside.) Likewise, Richard J. Arneson says of a similar gambling case: "Surely this [resulting] inequality in expected welfare does not create any prima facie case for society to correct the inequality by transfer of resources."5 Presumably, if Arneson believed this inequality to be bad, he would not have asserted this. He would have claimed that there was a prima facie though perhaps not an all-things-considered case for holding that society should eliminate it.

In this article, I defend two claims. First, I argue that differential option luck is bad from the point of view of equality. Indeed, mutatis mutandis my argument challenges the apparently commonsense view (normally accepted by both egalitarians and nonegalitarians) that there is a crucial moral distinction between differential option and differential brute luck. Second, I argue that statements such as those quoted above do not adequately capture egalitarianism. In my view egalitarianism is better stated as follows:

It is bad if it is not both the case that everyone is equally well off and has exercised their responsibility equivalently to others. If everyone has not exercised their responsibility equivalently to others, then inequality that reflects differential exercises of responsibility is less bad than inequality (and equality) that does not reflect differential exercises of responsibility.

Two persons have exercised their responsibility equivalently to each other if, and only if, there is no reason from the point of view of responsibility why they should not be equally well off. It is not as if, say, one person deserves to be better off than the other because she laudably puts up an effort, while the other culpably fails to do so.

It is worth emphasizing that although the highest-ranking outcome,

4. Ronald Dworkin, "What Is Equality? II. Equality of Resources," Philosophy &Public

Affairs 10 (1981): 283-345, pp. 293-95, reprinted, slightly revised, in his Sovereign Virtue (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000), pp. 65-119. Unlike many other egali-

tarians, Dworkin (explicitly) takes the strong view that equality not only permits but requires letting the results of differential option luck stand.

5. RichardJ. Arneson, "Liberalism, Distributive Subjectivism, and Equal Opportun- ity for Welfare," Philosophy & Public Affairs 19 (1990): 158-94, p. 176, see also Arneson, "Equality and Equality of Opportunity for Welfare," pp. 83-84, and "Equality of Opportu- nity for Welfare Defended and Recanted," Journal of Political Philosophy 7 (1999): 488-97, p. 491. Similar views on differential option luck are expressed in Jerry Cohen, "On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice," pp. 908, 916; Eric Rakowski, EqualJustice (Oxford: Clar- endon Press, 1991), pp. 74-75;John Rawls, A Theory ofJustice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971), p. 86. Neither Rawls's difference principle nor Arneson's present responsibility-sensitive prioritariansim qualify as egalitarian views in a strict sense. But their

views qualify as egalitarian in a broader and commonly used sense of that term.

550 Ethics April2001

according to this principle, is one in which everyone is equally well off, my characterization of egalitarianism accords with that of theorists such as Dworkin, Arneson, and Jerry Cohen in treating choice and responsibility as a significant determinant of what equality requires. Obviously, my second claim bears directly on my first. For, so far as equality is concerned, if it is best that everyone is equally well off and exercises responsibility to the same extent, then it follows that differential option luck is bad. However, the reverse does not hold; from the fact that differential option luck is bad from the point of view of equality, it does not follow that the best outcome regarding inequality is one in which everyone is equally well off and exercises their responsibility to the same extent.

The next four sections defend my first claim, that is, that differential option luck is bad from the point of view of inequality.6 In Section II, I challenge Dworkin's arguments for the view that equality is consistent with differential option luck. Section III shows why the badness of certain unequal outcomes resulting from gambling is best accounted for in terms of equality of outcome. Specifically, I argue that Dworkin's account of differential option luck can account for the badness of such outcomes only because it illicitly embodies values other than equality. In Section IV, I discuss various suggestions as to which concept of probability one should use in identifying cases of differential option luck. I argue that none is satisfactory given the role probability is supposed to play within egalitarian theory. In Section V, I show that it is not a feature of differential option luck per se that the worse-off person is responsible for being worse off or is worse off through a fault or choice of her own. My second claim-the one concerning the proper statement of egalitarianism-is defended in the sixth and final section.

Before proceeding I would like to draw attention to two limits of this article. First, the present study is primarily an exploration of the value of equality, not a defense of it. It supposes, but does not assert, that equality in some form or other is intrinsically valuable and then attempts to ar- ticulate the most plausible account of the value of equality, in particular in relation to differential option luck. Accordingly, for present purposes I can ignore questions such as whether egalitarianism can be defended against the leveling-down objection. Second, it is outside the scope of

6. For recent challenges to the egalitarian view on differential option luck expounded here differing from mine, see Elizabeth Anderson, "What Is the Point of Equality?" Ethics 109 (1999): 287-337;Jonathan Wolff, "Fairness, Respect, and the Egalitarian Ethos," Philosophy & Public Affairs 27 (1998): 97-122. Unlike Anderson and Wolff, I do not claim that making people's comparative positions track differential option luck undermines relations of equal respect. Unlike myself, Anderson and Wolff do not deny that if people's comparative positions are to track their comparative exercises of responsibility, then they must track differential option luck. RichardJ. Arneson replies to Anderson and Wolff effectively in "Welfare Should Be the Currency of Justice," CanadianJournal of Philosophy 30 (2000): 497-524, and "Luck Egalitarianism and Prioritarianism," Ethics 110 (2000): 339-49.


this article to discuss how distributive justice relates to equality (let alone how equality relates to what is the morally best or the morally required distribution). Hence, the article is neutral among views according to which equality is one value among others which determine what is distributivelyjust, views according to which equality alone determines what is distributivelyjust, and views according to which equality is not relevant to distributive justice at all.

II. DWORKIN ON OPTION LUCK AND BRUTE LUCK

In his highly influential 1981 papers on equality, Dworkin canonically defines option luck as follows: "Option luck is a matter of how deliberate and calculated gambles turn out-whether someone gains or loses through accepting an isolated risk he or she should have anticipated and might have declined. "o7 Option luck contrasts with "brute luck," and to- gether these types of luck exhaust the logical space of how risks fall out. For brute luck is "a matter of how risks fall out that are not in that sense deliberate gambles. "8 By way of illustration: if I suddenly go blind because of some genetic condition, my brute luck is bad, but if I buy lottery tickets and win, my option luck is good.

It is important to note that the availability of insurance provides a link between brute and option luck. For, as Dworkin puts it, "the decision to buy or reject ... insurance is a calculated gamble." 9 This means that a person may suffer bad brute luck and for that reason end up worse off than others, and yet the resulting inequality might reflect differential option luck. Roughly, this will be so if the person who ends up worse off could have insured against the sort of bad brute luck that she later suf- fered but declined to do so.10 So although it may be bad brute luck that I suddenly go blind because of a genetic condition, the fact that I end up worse off as a result of going blind will reflect bad option luck, provided that suitable insurance was available to me.

In Dworkin's view the distinction between option and brute luck matters crucially. For, according to Dworkin, on the plausible assumption that we cannot count on the private insurance market offering suitable insurance such that whenever someone is worse off, this reflects bad option luck, equality requires the state to redistribute from people with good brute luck to people with bad brute luck against which no suitable insurance was available. Equality does not require the state to tax people with good option luck in order to compensate people with bad option luck, however. Nor does it require the state to compensate people who suffer bad brute luck where suitable insurance was available to them.

7. Dworkin, "Equality of Resources," p. 293. 8. Ibid. 9. Ibid. 10. Ibid., pp. 293, 296.

552 Ethics April 2001

Most would agree, of course, that there are good reasons why the state should not, as a matter of distributional policy, tax people with good option luck to compensate people with bad option luck. One reason is that doing so, in effect, deprives people of the opportunity to gamble. Some people prefer to gamble, and it is bad to prevent people from doing what they want to do. This reason, however, is not an egalitarian reason. It has nothing to do with relativities, so to speak. It is a bad thing that I am deprived of an opportunity to gamble, if I want to gamble, whether or not others are deprived of the opportunity to do what they want to do. But my present concern is whether there are reasons to allow the effects of differential option luck from the point of view of equality.

Dworkin claims to offer two such reasons. First, he argues that there is no egalitarian case for (and even one against) redistribution between people who play it safe and people who take risks and win (or lose): "People should pay the price of the life they have decided to lead, measured in what others give up in order that they can do so.... But the price of a safer life, measured in this way, is precisely foregoing any chance of the gains whose prospect induces others to gamble." 11 Unfor- tunately, it is not clear from this passage (nor from any other passage in Dworkin's 1981 work) exactly why the price of a safer life is forgoing any chance of gains from others' gambles. For living a risky life may impose significant costs on others, ones for which one might argue that they should be compensated. To show this, I need to describe Dworkin's "auction."

Dworkin's auction provides an interpretation of what it is for an initial allocation of external resources to be an equal one.12 The basic idea is to sell off all the external resources of a community at an auction in which all members of the community have equal purchasing power. Do- ing so will, Dworkin believes, secure three important ends. First, no one will envy anyone else's bundle of resources. Second, everyone will play an equal role in determining what bundles of resources result from the auction. Finally, the procedure meets the desideratum quoted above: that people pay the price of the lives they decide to lead, measured in what others give up in order that they can do so. In short, the auction ensures that resources have been equally divided.

Now, suppose that you and I (and no one else) are bidding at an auction of this sort. Let us also suppose, as Dworkin does, that each bundle of resources can be seen as a prospect involving a gamble.13 Some resources represent risky gambles and are useful only for lives that involve a large element of option luck only; some do not. Consider

11. Ibid., p. 294. 12. Ibid., pp. 283-92. Dworkin also develops further devices to deal with handicaps

and inequalities of talents. 13. Ibid., p. 295.


the following two cases in which each of us faces a choice between two gambles. The first gamble is risky but very favorable in the sense that its expected net value is much higher than the expected net value of not taking up the gamble. The second gamble involves less risk, but it has a much lower ex ante value. We may either pool risks of loss and prospects of gain or refrain from so doing. Suppose we pool risks and prospects of gain and that both of us chooses the risky gamble. We can then rea- sonably expect to live good lives, even though we both choose the risky gamble. For it is unlikely that we will both lose (or at any rate much less likely than either of us losing). Now suppose instead that I refuse to pool risks and prospects with you (as, indeed, Dworkin's auction licenses me to do). You now face a choice which is worse, from your point of view, than before. For now you have the choice between the less risky but not so valuable gamble and the very favorable but risky gamble. And if you go for the latter you will be exposed to the full effects of option luck.

These cases show that risky lives do have a price of some sort. When there are fewer people with whom one can pool risks, those who prefer safer lives may well face worse options in that these people will, for a given level of expected value, face higher risks.14 These costs are not reflected, however, in the prices of the various packages of resources at Dworkin's auction of external resources. Dworkin's auction therefore fails to satisfy the third of his own desiderata.

Some might suggest that costs of the present sort should be disre- garded on the ground that people are entitled to choose to live risky lives without compensating others for the costs of the above-mentioned sort that this choice imposes on them.15 But Dworkin cannot take advantage

14. How much worse these options will be depends on the ratio of people who choose to live risky lives to people who choose to live safe lives, on the latter's preferences, and on the particular features of the available gambles. If only a few people refuse to pool risks of losses and prospects of benefits with a lot of people who prefer safer lives, a lot of people's options will be slightly worsened.

15. In a response to a related criticism by Cohen-that Dworkin's ideal of equality of resources fails to accommodate the fact that people can suffer bad brute luck as a result of other people's preferences in ways that merit compensation-Dworkin seems to offerjust this reply: "The mix of ambitions, attitudes, and preferences that I find in my community, or the overall state of the world's resources, is not in itself either fair or unfair to me; on the contrary, that mix is among the facts that fix what it is unfair for me to do or to have" (Sovereign Virtue, p. 298). This reply, however, seems beside the present point. The issue raised by my objection is not whether the mix of preferences is unjust to risk-averse people, but whether it is unjust to risk-averse people that nonrisk-averse people are entitled to act on their preferences in ways that leave risk-averse people worse off (and vice versa). More- over, I can concede that the mix of preferences in some sense fixes what is fair without conceding that the fixation takes the shape Dworkin supposes. It is also noteworthy that Dworkin, in his reply to Cohen, does not deny that the sort of bad luck Cohen has in mind is indeed bad brute luck. He only denies that it is the sort of bad luck for which justice requires compensation.


of this reply, since he explicitly rejects any appeal to entitlements that are not based on a prior account of what equality requires.16

One might offer an alternative reply on Dworkin's behalf. Dworkin explicitly assumes that for the purpose of "defining a suitable conception of equality of resources ... equality of resources is a matter of equality in whatever resources are owned privately by individuals." 17 Since pooling risks and prospects in my two-person economy amounts in fact to public ownership of resources, it might be said that my objection proceeds on an illicit basis. Unsurprisingly, however, I do not see things in this way. For what my objection shows is that, ceteris paribus, risk-averse people may be worse off with a more extensive private ownership of resources than they would be with a less extensive one. If, say, the majority decides to lead the sort of life that is possible in a state with few publicly owned resources, then this does impose a sort of costs on risk-averse people. To be sure, the reverse also holds. If people are required to pool risks, then this will impose costs on people who are not risk averse. This possibility, however, introduces no objection to my present argument. For this argument is not meant to show that risk-averse people should be compensated for these costs. The conclusion is, rather, this: that the possibility of such costs being imposed on risk-averse people means that Dworkin has failed to show that there is no egalitarian case for redistribution between people who play it safe and people who take risks and win (or lose). For, to repeat, allowing the latter to take private risks means that risk-averse people have to give up the pooling of risks and prospects that they prefer. Given the desideratum Dworkin invokes to defend differential option luck-that people pay the price of the life they have decided to lead, measured in what others give up in order that they can do so- it therefore seems that a plausible theory of equality of resources must take account of the possibility of pooling of risks and prospects.18

Second, Dworkin argues that there is no egalitarian case for (and even one against) redistribution between people who take risks but have differential option luck. Such redistribution would deprive winners and losers of the lives they prefer and would thereby "deprive them of an equal voice in the construction of lots to be auctioned." 19

This argument is hard to follow. It also seems to be inapplicable to most of the cases Dworkin treats as cases of differential option luck.20

16. Dworkin, "Equality of Resources," p. 312. 17. Ibid., p. 283. 18. My argument against Dworkin's view that there is no egalitarian case for saying

that people who lead risky lives should compensate people who play it safe is in some ways similar to an argument put forward by Colin MacLeod in his Liberalism, Justice, and Markets (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), pp. 46-78. However, unlike MacLeod's, my argument does not rely on the concept of unreasonable risk taking.

19. Dworkin, "Equality of Resources," p. 295. 20. Ibid., p. 293.


For Dworkin takes a very generous view of what constitutes option luck- involving gambles. In his view, not only what I shall call 'gambles proper but also 'quasi-gambles' qualify as option luck-involving gambles. A gamble proper is a gamble in which the gambler prefers facing the gamble to having its expected value. The Las Vegas sort of thing is likely to be a gamble proper for almost all participants. I say "is likely," because it is not an intrinsic property of a gamble that it is a gamble proper or quasi-gamble. Rather, a particular gamble is a gamble proper, or a quasi- gamble, in virtue of the gambler's associated attitude. Playing at the ca- sino will not be gambling proper if you have strong confidence in your ability to predict the outcome. A quasi-gamble is one in which the gambler prefers the expected value of the gamble to facing the gamble. For most people smoking is a quasi-gamble. In my view, Dworkin's "equal voice" consideration applies at best to gambles proper.

If the state were to tax winners in gambles proper in order to compensate losers, thereby ensuring that winners and losers alike end up with the expected value of their gambles, then winners and losers would be worse off (ex ante). For they prefer facing their gamble to its expected value. So in the present case, people who prefer to take a gamble proper would regret the absense of a lot for which they would prefer to bid at the auction.

If, however, the state were to tax winners in quasi-gambles to compensate losers, both winners and losers would be better off (ex ante). By definition, quasi-gamblers prefer the expected value of their gamble to facing their gamble. Hence, redistribution of the present sort would not deprive quasi-gamblers of something for which they would prefer to bid at the auction. This last point can be made more vividly. Imagine the state taxing smokers who, as Dworkin puts it, take successful gambles (i.e., do not develop cancer as a result of smoking) to pay for the medical treatment of smokers whose gambles turn out to be unsuccessful. In this situation, surely, most smokers cannot complain that they are being denied an equal voice in the construction of lots to be auctioned. For, ex ante, smokers prefer the expected value of smoking to facing a gamble that might turn out to be very unsuccessful, that is, they develop cancer and receive no medical treatment.

The difference between gambles proper and quasi-gambles is relevant to Dworkin's argument. For most would, I suppose, find the difference intuitively relevant. Ceteris paribus, most would find it morally more important to help risk-averse people who gamble and lose than to help risk-loving people who gamble and lose.21

21. Arneson and Cohen draw a distinction which appears to be morally similar: see Arneson, "Equality and Equality of Opportunity for Welfare," pp. 80-81; Cohen, "On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice," pp. 926-27, 936-39. They think that egalitarian justice may well require compensating someone whose preferences are expensive but does not prefer-perhaps even regrets-that her preferences are expensive-theyjust turned out to be so-unlike someone whose preferences are expensive and prefers their being so.


In my view Dworkin and others have failed to keep the difference between gambles proper and quasi-gambles in focus. As a result of this, they have made an unreasonable extrapolation from moral claims about differential outcomes of gambles proper to moral claims about differential outcomes of quasi-gambles.22 The former have some plausibility. The latter have no plausibility at all.

I now want to put aside the problem that Dworkin's argument against redistribution from winners to losers seems inapplicable to quasi- gambles and, hence, to a wide range of gambles that in Dworkin's view qualify as option luck-involving gambles. Suppose that for any gamble everyone is a risk lover (or suppose that everyone is risk neutral). Sup- pose, moreover, that everyone is deprived of the opportunity to live risky lives through ex post redistribution by the state from winners to losers. Here one can say that people are denied a voice "in the construction of lots to be auctioned," but one can hardly say that they are denied an equal voice. Ex hypothesi, they are all denied an opportunity that they all prefer to have (or they are all denied an opportunity they do not prefer not to have).

Dworkin might concede this point but reply that it has little bearing on the question of how we should evaluate differential option luck in the actual world. People actually differ greatly in their attitudes toward risk. Therefore any actual redistribution from winners to losers would deprive some people of an equal voice in the construction of lots, even if one could imagine worlds very different from ours in which redistribution would have no such drawback.

Still, it is not clear how Dworkin can appeal here to the equal voice consideration. For the very same consideration will tell against the claim that there should be redistribution from people with good brute luck to people with bad brute luck for which no insurance was available. Some people may prefer to live a life fully exposed to the effects of good and bad brute luck. But, clearly, Dworkin would not withhold compensation for bad brute luck on the ground that such people would be denied an equal voice in the construction of lots.23

To reply on Dworkin's behalf that any piece of luck that one prefers to be exposed to in virtue of one's preference is a piece of option luck is

22. See, e.g., Rakowski, pp. 79-81, on natural disasters. 23. At one point Dworkin seems to address this objection: "If two people lead

roughly the same lives, but one goes suddenly blind, then we cannot explain the resulting differences in their incomes either by saying that one took risks that the other chose not to take, or that we could not redistribute without denying both the lives they prefer. For the accident has (we assume) nothing to do with choices in the pertinent sense" ("Equality of Resources," p. 296). But this reply lacks force. The fact that brute accidents have nothing to do with choice does not show that the state would not deprive people who prefer to live lives sensitive to the full effects of brute luck of the lives they prefer if it were to eliminate differential brute luck.


incoherent with Dworkin's definition of option luck. For one thing, one might prefer to live a life exposed to some brute luck even if that luck is unavoidable. But any given piece of option luck is avoidable: option luck is luck relating to gambles that one can decline to take. So although the equal voice consideration may show that we need not redistribute in gambles proper, it does not distinguish between differential brute and differential option luck. Since Dworkin thinks that we should redistribute to eliminate differential brute luck, it is far from clear how he can appeal to the equal voice consideration to argue that we should not redistribute to eliminate differential option luck.

So far I have criticized Dworkin's argument as to why egalitarian justice requires differential brute luck and differential option luck to be treated differently. Specifically, I have tried to demonstrate that his case for the claim that we should neither compensate for bad option luck generously construed nor appropriate (some of) the gains of good option luck is flawed. If my criticisms are sound, Dworkin's defense of his view on inequalities arising from differential option luck is inadequate. But, of course, this does not show that no adequate egalitarian defense can be given. That no such defense is available is shown in the remaining four sections of the article.

III. UNACCEPTABLE RISKS AND THE SUFFICIENCYVIEW

If someone's acceptance of a risk is a matter of option luck, then it follows that this person could have declined the risk. When could one in the relevant no-compensation-claim-engendering sense have declined a risk? Given Dworkin's aim to construct an attractive ideal of equality, we can make some progress with this question. Clearly, being in a position to choose another gamble is not the same thing as being able to decline the former gamble in the sense Dworkin intends. For it might be the case that whatever one does one will face the risk of an unacceptably bad outcome. To see this, consider the following case.

Example 1. -As a result of circumstances wholly beyond their control, Adrian and Bruce must choose between the following two lotteries.24 The first offers a 90 percent chance of abundant plain food and a 10 percent risk of no food as a result of drought. The second offers an 80 percent chance of abundant delicious food and a 20 percent chance of no food at all as a result of flooding. Fully aware of the options facing them, Adrian and Bruce choose the first lottery. Adrian is lucky. Bruce is not.

There is a sense here in which Adrian and Bruce both take a deliberate and calculated gamble, accepting risks they anticipated and might have declined. They know the risks and may choose the other lottery. Yet, all is not well so far as inequality is concerned. So if there is nothing bad

24. I take this qualification as read in the examples that follow.


about differential option luck regarding inequality, example 1 should not be viewed as a case of differential option luck.

One way to avoid viewing example 1 as a case of differential option luck is this. Risks may be described in various ways. A given risk may be avoidable when described in one way (e.g., as "taking a 10 percent risk of getting no food at all as a result of drought") but unavoidable when described in another way (e.g., as "taking a risk of getting no food"). So we might say that if there is a description under which a risk is unavoidable, then how the risk falls out is wholly a matter of brute luck. On this suggestion, the fact that Bruce ends up starving in example 1 is a matter of brute luck.

Unfortunately, this suggestion is flawed. To see this consider the following.

Example 2. -Cecil and Danny are in the same situation as Adrian and Bruce, except that their lotteries are somewhat different. The first lottery offers a 99 percent chance of abundant plain food and a 1 percent risk of no food as a result of drought. The second lottery offers a 1 percent chance of abundant delicious food and a 99 percent chance of no food at all as a result of flooding. Cecil chooses the first lottery and ends up with plenty of plain food. Danny takes the second lottery and ends up with no food at all.

On the present suggestion it is simply a matter of bad brute luck that Danny ends up with no food. For Danny could not have avoided the risk of having no food. But it seems unsatisfactory to say that the difference between Cecil and Danny is simply a matter of differential brute luck. The mere fact that a risk fits a description under which it is unavoidable does not, therefore, imply that how it falls out is simply a matter of brute luck.

To accommodate both of our examples, I propose the following: consider cases in which two people face identical lotteries, all of which involve the risk of an unacceptably bad outcome. These people either choose the same lottery or do not.

If they choose the same lottery, then any differential luck between them is a matter of differential brute luck, something which, perhaps, it would not have been, had a gamble been available to them that guaranteed an acceptable worst outcome. Call this condition 'the Reasonable, Guaranteed Minimum Requirement.'25 This requirement is intuitively attractive, since it accommodates example 1. It also seems acceptable,

25. Dworkin's definition of option luck suggests a further requirement, namely: that an option luck gamble involves an isolated risk only (henceforth, the 'Isolated Risk Require- ment'). A risk of a certain event occurring is an isolated risk if, and only if, its occurrence will only have a minor impact on one's life. The risk of starving to death is not an isolated risk. For most of us the risk of losing $1,000 is an isolated risk. Although this requirement, like the Reasonable, Guaranteed Minimum Requirement, accommodates examples 1 and 2, the two requirements are distinct. Someone who has the option of living a normal, rea-


exegetically speaking, to attribute something like it to Dworkin. For it seems reasonable to understand the requirement that gambles involving option luck be both "deliberate" and such that the agent could have declined them as ruling out gambles where the agent could not have avoided a risk of an unacceptably bad outcome.

If, by contrast, two persons choose different lotteries, then any differential luck between them may to some degree be a matter of differential option luck despite the fact that all available lotteries involved the risk of an unacceptably bad outcome. The degree to which this is the case depends on how much, if at all, the lotteries differ in respect of the likelihood of an unacceptably bad outcome. The more they differ in this way, the bigger the differential option luck (and the smaller the differential brute luck) component becomes. In example 2 almost all of the differential luck belongs to the differential option luck component. Call this condition 'the Comparable Insufficiency Aversion Requirement.' This requirement may not find any support, exegetically speaking, in Dworkin's account of option luck, but, as example 2 shows, it has some intuitive support.

In what follows I shall focus on the Reasonable, Guaranteed Mini- mum Requirement. For, if this requirement is built into the notion of option luck, egalitarian defenders of the option/brute luck asymmetry will face a difficult question. Inequalities resulting from differential luck in gambles involving an unavoidable risk of an unacceptably bad outcome are objectionable, but inequalities resulting from differential luck in gambles that do not involve an unavoidable risk of an unacceptably bad outcome are unobjectionable. Is the best explanation of this difference one that appeals to the value of equality or one that appeals to some other value? I believe it is the latter.

It is hard to believe that there is any objectionable ex ante inequality involved in example 1. After all, Adrian and Bruce face exactly the same (unacceptably risky) set of options. It is therefore difficult to see how we can explain the Reasonable, Guaranteed Minimum Requirement by appeal to equality. However, there is another, nonegalitarian view (nonegalitarian in a strict sense, i.e.) which easily explains the Reasonable, Guaranteed Minimum Requirement. This is a modified version of Harry G. Frankfurt's "sufficiency view."

Frankfurt says: "With respect to the distribution of economic assets, what is important from the point of view of morality is not that everyone should have the same but that each should have enough." 26 A person has

sonably good life but chooses to gamble for money by playing Russian roulette may make a deliberate and calculated gamble, but that gamble does not involve an isolated risk. For present purposes, however, we can ignore the Isolated Risk Requirement.

26. Harry G. Frankfurt, "Equality as a Moral Ideal," Ethics 98 (1987): 21-43; reprinted in his The Importance of What We Care About: Philosophical Essays (Cambridge: Cam- bridge University Press, 1988), pp. 134-58, p. 134.


"enough" in the way of economic assets-that is, money-when "he is content, or ... it is reasonable for him to be content, with having no more money than he has." 27 Being content with the amount of money one has does not mean that one would not be pleased to have more money or that one would not sacrifice other goods, such as leisure, for more money. It does mean that one has no significant, active interest in acquiring more money.28 A content person will simply not regard it as important to have more money.

Consider, now, two modifications of Frankfurt's sufficiency view. First, Frankfurt formulates the sufficiency view with respect to the distribution of economic assets, but he adds that "some of what [he has] to say about economic . . . sufficiency applies as well to [welfare, opportunity, respect, and need satisfaction] ." 29 Whether or not Frankfurt would endorse the sufficiency view as applied to, say, welfare, there clearly is room for such a view. For example, one might think that what matters from the point of view of distributive justice is that one should have enough welfare in the sense that one's attention is focused on, say, satis- fying nonself-interested preferences. So the first modification of Frank- furt's sufficiency view is to say that people should have enough of whatever is the proper object of concern from the point of view of distributive justice. The motivation for this modification is that money cannot plausibly be construed as such an object (as Frankfurt, I am sure, would agree).

Second, what Frankfurt has in mind by "enough" is not prospects of benefits (i.e., money) but actual benefits. But, clearly, one might dis- agree with Frankfurt over this and still hold a view close to the sufficiency view, a view according to which each should have the option of having enough for certain. This is the second modification of Frankfurt's sufficiency view. The motivation for adopting it could be the same as that which explains why some egalitarians favor equality of opportunity over straight equality, that is, to accommodate considerations about responsibility.

Let us call the view resulting from this pair of revisions 'the Revised Sufficiency View.' It differs from Frankfurt's sufficiency view. It implies that there is nothing bad about someone not having enough of whatever is the currency of distributive justice if, say, this shortfall is the result of a decision to gamble when the option of having enough for sure was available.

The Revised Sufficiency View explains what is bad about the situation in example 1: namely, that neither Adrian nor Bruce had the option of having enough for certain. Given the Revised Sufficiency View-

27. Ibid., p. 152. 28. Ibid., p. 153. 29. Ibid., p. 135.


if they had had an alternative which would have guaranteed them enough for certain-they could duly have been held responsible for the outcome of gambling. Bruce would then have been in no position to complain, on grounds of distributive justice, that he ended up worse off. (The Revised Sufficiency View needs to be developed further to accommodate example 2, but for present purposes we can set this aside.)

I am not claiming here that it is impossible to account for (part of) the badness of the situation in example 1 by appealing to the disvalue of inequality on no construal thereof. For instance, one could say that part of what is bad about the situation in example 1 is simply that Adrian and Bruce end up unequally well off. Or one could say that part of what is bad about the situation is that Adrian and Bruce end up unequally well off in a way not justified by their differential exercise of responsibility. But these accounts do not cohere with conceptions of equality that allow for the possibility of gamblers ending up unequally well off.

The Revised Sufficiency View can be construed in a way that renders it compatible with egalitarianism, because one might think that insufficiency and inequality are bad.30 So it seems egalitarians are free to say that there is something bad about the situation in example 1 but that it has nothing to do with inequality. Indeed, there may be nothing surpris- ing about such a claim. There are other reasons-reasons connected with leveling-down situations-why egalitarians must accept values other than equality. But the fact that a pluralist egalitarian view is not in itself incoherent is, of course, consistent with my claim that by building the Reasonable, Guaranteed Minimum Requirement into the notion of option luck, one does not accommodate egalitarian concerns. One accommodates concerns best captured by the Revised Sufficiency View.

There is a problem, however, in accounting for the badness of the situation in example 1 only by appeal to the Revised Sufficiency View, for there does seem to be something bad about it regarding inequality. The fact that Dworkin's ideal of equality of resources (and nonoutcome-based ideals of equality in general) cannot capture this aspect, once we subtract those elements of the theory that are better accounted by the Revised Sufficiency View, speaks in favor of some alternative theory of equality.

To see that there is something bad about the situation in example 1 with respect to inequality, suppose that Adrian and Bruce had both ended up with abundant plain food or with no food at all. Surely these outcomes would have been better so far as inequality is concerned than the actual outcome in example 1. This seems to be best explained by the ex post inequality involved in example 1. The difference in how we evaluate these cases cannot be accounted for in terms of the Revised Suffi- ciency View, because neither Adrian nor Bruce has an option that guar- antees having enough in these cases.

30. Frankfurt, of course, introduces the sufficiency view as a competitor to equality.


To sum up the argument of this section: inequalities that result from people's having differential luck when (a) they could not have avoided the risk of an unacceptably bad outcome and (b) they choose the same lottery seem bad. Dworkin's account of option luck seems to accommodate this fact, but it does so in a way that is best accounted for by the Revised Sufficiency View rather than by the value of equality. Insofar as we care about equality, however, this seems to be the wrong approach. Inequalities resulting from people's having differential luck, when they could not have avoided the risk of an unacceptably bad outcome and they chose the same lottery, seem bad from the point of view of equality. Since outcome-based accounts of equality can explain the badness of such inequality, this speaks in their favor vis-A-vis nonoutcome-based accounts such as Dworkin's, which allow for differential option luck. Ac- cording to outcome-based accounts of equality, however, differential option luck is of concern from the point of view of equality.

It is true that it does not strictly follow from the fact that we need to appeal to the ideal of equality of outcomes to account for why the situation in example 1 is bad regarding inequality-that all inequalities of outcome, including those generated by differential option luck, are bad. But to say that inequalities of outcome are bad when those between whom they obtain had the option of having only slightly less than enough for sure and not at all bad when those unequally placed had the option of having just slightly more than enough for certain is ad hoc. I also suspect that people who have the option of having enough for certain have the prospect of having quite a lot for certain. This, I believe, distorts our intuitions, making it harder for us to see that outcome inequalities are bad, even where those between whom they obtain had the option of having enough for certain. So much for my first direct argument against the claim that differential option luck is of no concern from the point of view of equality.

IV. WHICH PROBABILITIES? WHICH OUTCOMES?

Henceforth I shall disregard gambles involving unacceptably bad outcomes and the problems they create for Dworkin and other egalitarians with similar views on option luck. I want to turn to an issue which is at least as important for any theory of equality that allows differential option luck, namely, under what conditions is the inequality that exists between two people a matter of differential option luck? Although he defines option luck and brute luck, Dworkin leaves differential option luck and differential brute luck undefined. This is unfortunate. What egalitarians really want is not to be able to tell, in any given case, whether how well off a person is can be explained as a result of option luck or brute luck. They want to be able to tell whether an inequality between two persons is a matter of differential option luck or a matter of differential


brute luck. So far I have simply relied on our untutored judgments concerning this issue. But it is in fact quite complicated.

An initial gloss on differential option luck is the following.

The Same Expected Value Requirement: The inequality obtaining between two persons is a matter of differential option luck if, and only if, each deliberately took a gamble they could have avoided, their gambles were identical in terms of expected value, and the inequality between them resulted from their gambles having different outcomes.

This requirement appears to be along the right lines. It seems plausible to suppose that differential option luck requires that those between whom it obtains to have faced gambles that were equally good; it seems natural to assume that two gambles are equally good if, and only if, their expected values are the same. Unfortunately, both these assump- tions are false. However attractive the Same Expected Value Require- ment may seem, it is flawed given the role it is supposed to play in egalitarian theory.

First, on the present proposal some forms of differential luck other than differential option luck seem no worse from the point of view of equality than differential option luck. To see this, compare the following two cases, both of which involve people facing lotteries with different expected values.

Example 3. -Eric faces two lotteries. The first offers 100 for certain. The second lottery offers a 50 percent chance of 150, a 25 percent chance of 90, and a 25 percent chance of 50. Frank also faces two lotteries. The first offers 100 for certain, whereas the second involves a 50 percent chance of 150 and a 50 percent chance of 90. They both choose the second lottery. Although Frank's second lottery is more favorable than Eric's in terms of expected value, Eric ends up with 150, whereas Frank ends up with 90. A person with 90 is, let us suppose, significantly worse off than a person with 150 and somewhat worse off than a moderately well-off person (i.e., a person who ends up with 100).

Example 4. -Things are as they are in example 3, except that this time the person with the more-favorable second lottery ends up with 150, whereas the person with the less-favorable lottery ends up with 90.

Examples 3 and 4 both involve inequality, and the inequality in example 3 seems just as bad as the inequality in example 4. Whether or not the person who is worse off is the person who faced the most-unfavorable gamble seems to make no difference to the badness of the inequality. This is not to say that ex ante equality in respect of gambles is a mere means to equality of outcome (something which may indeed be the case). But it does suggest a more modest conclusion.


The Irrelevance Claim: Inequalities of expected value between the gambles faced by two persons are irrelevant to the badness of a resulting inequality when the features in virtue of which one gamble contains less expected value than the other do not explain the resulting unequal outcome.

The features rendering Eric's gamble less favorable than Frank's do not explain the unequal outcome in examples 3 and 4. This is obviously so in example 3, since here the person facing the less-favorable gamble (Eric) ends up being better off. Nor do these features explain the unequal outcome in example 4, since here neither the fact that Eric might have ended up with 50 nor the fact that the chance of Eric's getting 90 is smaller than Frank's chance of getting 90 explain why Eric ended up worse off than Frank. After all, Eric got 90, and his chance of getting 150 was the same as Frank's.

What makes the Irrelevance Claim hard to reconcile with the Same Expected Value Requirement is the assumption (made by Dworkin) that differential luck exhaustively divides into differential option and brute luck and that only the former is not undesirable regarding inequality. For the Irrelevance Claim suggests that you can have inequalities that do not result from differential option luck, according to the Same Ex- pected Value Requirement, and yet are no more undesirable regarding inequality than are inequalities that result from differential option luck. Thus, insofar as differential option luck can be had at all, the gambles faced by those between whom the differential option luck obtains need not have been equally good.

Second, it seems that there could be differential option luck, on the Same Expected Value Requirement, that is regrettable from the point of view of equality. To see this, consider the following.

Example 5.-Gertrude faces two lotteries. She can either have an acceptable 100 for certain or a 50 percent chance of 150 and a 50 percent chance of 50. Harriet also faces two lotteries. She can either have 100 for certain or a 50 percent chance of 110 and a 50 percent chance of 90. Suppose they both gamble, and Gertrude ends up with 150, whereas Harriet ends up with 110.

The lotteries they faced had the same expected value. But is there nothing bad about the inequality that obtains between them?

A case can be made for the view that there is not. The ex ante value of the lotteries they faced were the same. It is true that, although they both had their best outcome realized, Harriet ended up much worse off than Gertrude. But this, one might argue, is not bad regarding inequality. After all, had they both had their only other possible outcome realized, Gertrude would have been much worse off than Harriet.

There is, however, a countervailing consideration, and to my mind this consideration has much more weight. Harriet may rightly complain


that she never had the chance of becoming as well off as Gertrude. (Let us assume that she would have chosen Gertrude's gamble, had she had the chance.) Harriet is worse off than Gertrude through no choice of her own, and this is exactly the kind of situation egalitarians regret. As Dworkin says: "The argument in favour of allowing differences in option luck to affect income and wealth assumes that everyone has in principle the same gambles available to him. Someone who never had the opportunity to run a similar risk, and would have taken the opportunity had it been available, will still envy some of those who did have it." 31 One might well argue that this argument does not apply in Harriet's case. For Harriet might rightly complain that she did not have the opportunity to run a risk that was similar in the relevant respect and might envy Ger- trude's opportunity to do so. Moreover, she is worse off in a way that does not reflect any choice she made. She prefers Gertrude's gamble to her own, and her being worse off reflects this fact. Hence, Harriet's gamble was not, in the relevant sense, as good as Gertrude's, even though their gambles had the same expected value.

The more general point underlying this fact is that it is only for risk- neutral gamblers that two gambles are equally good if, and only if, they have the same expected value. People who are risk loving (such as Har- riet) and people who are risk-averse deny that gambles are equally good if their expected values are the same. Risk, as well the expected value, matters.

So I believe that I have given two reasons to reject the Same Ex- pected Value Requirement. If we revise it to accommodate these two ob- jections we get:

The Revised Requirement: The inequality that obtains between two persons is a matter of differential option luck if, and only if, (1) each deliberately took a gamble they could have avoided; (2) their gambles either involved identical outcomes with identical probabilities or, insofar as they did not, either (a) the fact that their gambles involved different outcomes or different probabilities does not explain why they ended up unequally well off, or (b) their gambles were equally good from the perspective of both gamblers; and (3) the inequality between them resulted from their gambles having different outcomes.

This suggestion avoids the weaknesses of the earlier proposal. By allowing that gambles involving different outcomes or probabilities can involve option luck provided that they do not explain the resulting inequality, the Revised Requirement meets the first objection. By insisting either on identical probabilities and outcomes (when these are ex- planatorily relevant) or that the gambles are equally good from the per-

31. Dworkin, "Equality of Resources," p. 296.


spective of both gamblers, the Revised Requirement meets my second

objection. The Revised Requirement may well stand in need of further refine-

ment along lines similar to those already explored.32 Nevertheless, I shall stick with it in what follows, for I now want to pursue a different issue: which outcomes and probabilities are relevant for the purposes of com- paring the gambles faced by two different persons? We need to answer this question in order to identify an example of inequality as a matter of differential option luck on any theory of what that variety of differential luck involves.

Different answers to the question can usefully be divided into three main categories.33 First, we might think that what matters are the probabilities that agents as a matter of fact ascribe to the various outcomes of their own gambles. Call these probabilities 'actual subjective probabilities.' Alternatively, we might think that the relevant probabilities are those that the agents would ascribe to possible outcomes of their own gambles were they more rational or better informed (or both) than they in fact are. Call these probabilities 'ideal subjective probabilities.' Obvi- ously, there will be a broad spectrum of theories of differential option luck using ideal subjective probabilities. These will range from theories that insist on slight improvements in rationality or informedness to theories that insist on perfect rationality and omniscience. The latter extreme is extensionally equivalent to the third proposal: that the relevant probabilities are 'objective probabilities.' The objective probability of an outcome is the probability of that outcome, not relative to a certain body of evidence possessed by an actual or perfectly rational agent, but objec- tively and absolutely. In an indeterministic world, an outcome will have an objective probability of between zero and one. In a deterministic world, the objective probability of any outcome that is in fact realized is one, and that of any outcome that is not realized is zero.

I shall now discuss each of these three possibilities, and a hybrid, in turn. I begin with the suggestion that actual, subjective probabilities determine whether a piece of differential luck is a piece of differential option luck. It is pretty clear that this suggestion is incorrect. The mere fact that two people perceive the gambles facing them to be equally favorable hardly justifies the inequality that may come to exist between them as a result of their gambling. It may be that one person's gamble is in fact much less favorable than that faced by the other person. It is just

32. See RichardJ. Arneson, "A Defense of Equal Opportunity for Welfare," Philosophi- cal Studies 62 (1991): 187-95, p. 190; Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen, "Arneson on Equality of Opportunity for Welfare," Journal of Political Philosophy 7 (1999): 478-87, for further relevant considerations.

33. One can draw a map similar to the one offered in the main text of different views as to which outcomes we should ascribe to the various gambles.


that the first person lacks the intellectual resources necessary to form reliable beliefs about odds and outcomes. Or perhaps it is much more difficult to form reliable beliefs about odds and outcomes in the situation in which the first person is placed. Actual subjective probabilities cannot be what we are after here.

Let us turn to objective probabilities. These fare little better. Suppose we live in a deterministic world. In that case, people will face identical gambles only if they get the same outcomes. Given this, if the Revised Requirement allows for differential option luck at all in a deterministic world, this must result from the fact that the different odds and outcomes sometimes fail to play the appropriate causal role. But they cannot so fail. If the "probability-i outcome" of your gamble is better than the probability-1 outcome of my gamble, this fact explains why you end up better off than me. Assuming determinism holds, then, the Revised Re- quirement excludes inequalities that reflect differential option luck and hence are of no concern from the point of view of equality.

This reasoning alone does not establish that objective probabilities render inequalities that reflect differential option luck impossible. In- determinism needs to be brought into the picture before that conclusion can be drawn. But it would be very odd, I think, to suggest that inequalities resulting from differential luck in gambles where the outcome is physically determined are bad regarding inequality, although inequalities resulting from differential luck in gambles where the outcome is literally physically undetermined are not: either both sorts of inequality are bad, or neither is. People who think that fair gambling is, as Rawls puts it, a case of pure procedural justice are unlikely to think that the feature of gambling which justifies its outcome is that such an outcome is literally undetermined. Hence, someone who considers an unequal and physically determined outcome of gambling unjust is unlikely to think that introducing a bit of physical indetermination into the gamble would remove the offending injustice. I conclude that objective probabilities will not give us inequalities that both reflect differential option luck on the Revised Requirement and are of no concern from the point of view of equality.34 We are driven, then, to examine ideal subjective probabilities.

This kind of probability might enable us to avoid the problem with actual, subjective probabilities (i.e., that it seems unfair that someone who is unable properly to evaluate gambles ends up worse off because he takes a gamble that he falsely thinks is advantageous).3 But the present

34. The same conclusion applies to the extreme version of the ideal subjective probabilities view that is extensionally equivalent to an objective probabilities view.

35. In fact, the phrase 'should have' in Dworkin's definition of option luck suggests that Dworkin might have had ideal subjective probabilities in mind. If so, Dworkin's text does not tell us which version of the ideal, subjective probability accounts he accepts. Ulti-


proposal is, I believe, vulnerable to the flip side of this objection, so to speak. Obviously, the relevant ideal probabilities and outcomes may well be very different from the probabilities and outcomes that the agent (perhaps, blamelessly) believes the gamble involves. And one might conclude that, in some cases where such a divergence exists, actual subjective probabilities should determine whether a piece of differential luck is a piece of differential option luck. One might conclude this after con- sidering the following case.

Example 6. -Kelly and Lisa each face a gamble which is very favorable and equally favorable when assessed vis-A-vis ideal, subjective probabilities. Kelly, however, falsely and through no fault of her own believes the gamble to be very unfavorable and for that reason abstains from gambling. She would have gambled had she, like Lisa, believed the gamble to be very favorable. Lisa gambles and wins.

Using ideal, subjective probabilities to identify pieces of differential option luck, we ought to claim that the inequality that exists between Kelly and Lisa is a matter of that kind of luck-and thus is of no concern from the point of view of equality. But this claim rings false.

In the light of this objection, treating the argument offered against actual, subjective probabilities above as sound, it seems natural to move *to something like the following approach.

The Hybrid Suggestion: The inequality that obtains between two persons is a matter of differential option luck if each deliberately took a gamble they could have avoided; their gambles had (1) identical ideal, subjective probabilities and outcomes, (2) identical actual, subjective probabilities and outcomes, and (3) actual, subjective probabilities and outcomes that corresponded to ideal, subjective probabilities and outcomes; and the inequality between them resulted from their gambles having different actual outcomes.36

mately, I do not think that an ideal, subjective probability account is part of Dworkin's considered view. To see this, suppose I anticipate that I will run a certain risk by making some choice, although I have little or no reason to believe that I will run this risk. In other words, it is not the case that I should have anticipated the risk. (I assume that the mere fact that there is a risk thatp does not entail that I should have anticipated the risk thatp.) According to Dworkin's definition, on the present interpretation, how my gamble falls out is not then a matter of option luck. Moreover, since brute luck is simply defined as a matter of how nonoption luck risks fall out, how my gamble falls out is a matter of brute luck! However, given the use to which Dworkin's distinction between option and brute luck is employed, this seems implausible. If I make a calculated gamble and ascribe the correct probabilities to the various possible outcomes, even though I have no grounds for such ascriptions, I do not seem to have any greater claim for compensation than if I have grounds for such ascriptions.

36. I do not say "only if," because 2 and 3 need not hold in cases in which the relevant false beliefs do not play the right sort of causal role. Suppose someone believes that


Is a piece of differential luck that satisfies the hybrid suggestion of no concern form the point of view of equality? I do not think so. At this point, it is important to remember that ideal, subjective probabilities are nonetheless subjective probabilities. Thus, the fact that two people par- ticipated in a gamble with identical, subjective probabilities is compatible with the possibility that had we known more-and perhaps not much more-we could have predicted the differential outcome in advance. Just as we are able to categorize newborn babies into those who will or at least are very likely to become poor and babies who are likely to become rich, we might be able to group gamblers (including "gamblers" in Dworkin's generous sense of that term) into those who are likely to lose and those who are not. It is just that to identify the latter groups we need to process much more information. To return to one of Dwor- kin's examples of option luck-people who smoke heavily, fully aware of the risks of developing cancer as a result of smoking, that is, the ideal, subjective probabilities of developing cancer as a result of smoking.37 Some such people develop cancer. Some do not. We may not be able to explain this difference, and the ideal, subjective probability of developing cancer as a result of smoking may be the same for all involved parties. But this does not mean that there is no explanation. And if there is, then we could in principle divide heavy smokers at the age of, say, thirty into those who will and those who will not develop cancer later. And if this is possible, then it is by no means clear that the differential luck experi- enced by these two groups of smokers is of no concern from the point of view of equality. It is not a good reason from the point of view of equality to deny someone compensation on the ground that it is impossible to categorize similarly heavy smokers in advance into those who will develop cancer and those who will not. Injustice may transcend our present knowledge. If differential option luck is unobjectionable regarding inequality, we should not use ideal, subjective probabilities, even when they correspond to the actual, subjective probabilities, to identify pieces of that differential luck.

Some may deny that this conclusion applies to all forms of egalitarianism. It has become customary to distinguish between telic and deontic egalitarians, and the latter might be said to be immune to the present objection.

Telic egalitarians think that a state of affairs involving inequality is intrinsically bad in virtue of its inequality. Deontic egalitarians think that,

the gamble facing him is less favorable than it in fact is. Nevertheless, he gambles and becomes worse off as a result. This seems no worse than if he had held true beliefs about the gamble. After all, he would have been even more eager to take the gamble if he had had true beliefs about it. Nor do any of the conditions need hold if the gamblers' attitudes to risk differ.

37. Dworkin, "Equality of Resources," p. 293.


strictly speaking, it is not the unequal state of affairs that is objectionable, but the way in which it was produced. If we ask what is bad about the way in which an unequal state of affairs is produced, the answer is that where there is such inequality, some people (the worse off, presumably) will have been treated unequally and thus unjustly.38

The relevance of this to the use of ideal, subjective probabilities in identifying differential luck is as follows. Deontic egalitarians might insist that smokers who develop cancer are not treated unequally, even where it could in principle have been predicted-when these smokers were thirty that they, unlike others, would develop cancer.

This reply is suspect. Once it is conceded that, for the purposes of determining whether someone has been treated unequally, we should not use actual, but ideal subjective probabilities, it becomes hard to deny that equal treatment leads to equal outcomes. And it is clear that deontic egalitarians cannot identify pieces of differential luck on the basis of actual, subjective probabilities. For, insofar as it is desirable that people be treated equally, through no choice of their own those people surely cannot end up much worse off than others. This is why the state might not treat its citizens equally in implementing a policy that makes some citizens very badly off, even if its officials believe that the policy would affect everyone equally and do not intend the policy to affect the citizens unequally. For the state might not have done enough, regarding inequality, to see if its policy would make some citizens very badly off (which, of course, is consistent with saying that the state might have done enough, all things considered, to see if its policy would make some citizens very badly off).

To sum up my argument in this section: to show that a certain unequal outcome is not bad regarding inequality using the notion of option luck, we need to be able to tell when a piece of differential luck is differential option luck. But to do this in a way that renders plausible the view that differential option luck is of no concern from the point of view of equality is problematic. In particular, it is hard both to select the type of probabilities that are relevant in assessing gambles facing different persons and to allow that option luck is of no concern from the point of view of equality. It seems that none of the four suggestions reviewed above will avail those who want to argue in favor of differential option luck. Equally, it is difficult to see what other suggestions there could be. It is therefore unclear that there is such a thing as differential option luck- at least, if differential luck is of no concern from the point of view of egalitarian justice.

38. See Dennis McKerlie, "Equality," Ethics 106 (1996): 274-96; Derek Parfit, "Equality and Priority," in Ideals of Equality, ed. Andrew Mason (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), p. 7; Temkin, p. 11.


V DIFFERENTIAL OPTION LUCK AND RESPONSIBILITY

Many egalitarians see cases of differential option luck as one of several (not necessarily mutually exclusive) types of case in which considerations of responsibility motivate deviation from equality of outcome. Another such case is one in which an agent voluntarily sacrifices her own welfare to satisfy some ideal, for example, to protect whales from extinction.39 Situations where a person deliberately develops expensive tastes fall into a third such type of case for welfare egalitarians.40 And deviations from equality are also believed by some egalitarians to be permissible in a fourth type of case -that where an agent has culpably failed to develop talents, has avoided costs, or has "frittered away welfare opportunities which others seized." 41

In this section, I argue that differential option luck differs significantly from these other three types of cases in which deviations from equality of outcome are believed by many egalitarians not to be undesirable. In the three other types of cases, egalitarians will say-and there is a prima facie case for saying-that the worse-off people were in control over, and thus responsible for, their fate. But, as I show below, no such thing can be claimed with regard to differential option luck per se. So in endorsing differential option luck, egalitarians commit themselves to the view that there need not be anything bad about someone's being worse off even where that person's fate was outside of her control. This commitment seems incompatible with many statements of the egalitarian credo, and in my view, it (and not the egalitarian credo) has to be jettisoned.

To begin with, it is necessary to distinguish between two different ideas that we may convey by saying of someone that she is responsible for being worse off.42 We might mean, first, merely that it is morally permissible for others, including the state, not to make this person as well off as others. In saying this, we need not think that she controlled whether she ended up worse off in any way whatever. We need not think, for instance, that she is worse off through freely made, blameworthy choices that she need not have made. We may think, instead, say, that she is worse off through preferences whose effects others have no duty to correct.43 We

39. Cohen, "On the Currency of EgalitarianJustice," p. 916. 40. Arneson, "Equality and Equality of Opportunity for Welfare," pp.83-84; Ronald

Dworkin, "What Is Equality? I. Equality of Welfare," Philosophy & Public Affairs 10 (1981): 228-40; reprinted, slightly revised, in his Sovereign Virtue, pp. 11-64; John Rawls, "Social Unity and Primary Goods," in Utilitarianism and Beyond, ed. Amartya Sen and Bernard Wil- liams (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 168- 69.

41. Cohen, "On the Currency of EgalitarianJustice," pp. 915-16. 42. Arneson, "Welfare Should Be the Currency of Justice." 43. See Marc Fleurbaey, "Equal Opportunity or Equal Social Outcome?" Economics

and Philosophy 11 (1995): 25-55, p. 44; Rawls, A Theory of Justice, p. 94, and "Social Unity


may think, perhaps on utilitarian grounds, that it is useful if there is a clearly defined division of responsibility in society and that preferences fall under the authority of persons themselves. Or we may think that certain offensive preferences-for example, the preference that whites be better off than blacks-are such that their frustration should not be compensated by the satisfaction of nonoffensive preferences even if the offensive preferences were acquired and are retained involuntarily.44 Call this sense of responsibility the 'Authority Sense of Responsibility.'

There is, however, a second sense of responsibility for being worse off. To say that a person is worse off in this sense does imply that that person controlled whether she ended up worse off. In this sense, someone's being responsible for being worse off implies that one can hold her to account for the fact that she is worse off. Call this sense of responsibility for being worse off the 'Accountability Sense of Responsibility.'

It can be difficult to keep these two senses of responsibility apart. For it is natural to assume that a (perhaps the only) reason for holding someone responsible for being worse off in the authority sense is that she is responsible for being worse off in the accountability sense. Even if that were the case, of course, it would not follow that the two senses collapse into one. There are other prima facie reasons for holding someone responsible in the authority sense for being worse off than that they are responsible in the accountability sense for so being.45 Equally, there are cases in which most people would say that a person is responsible for being worse off in the accountability sense and yet is not responsible for being worse off in the authority sense.46

How does this distinction bear on my claim that option luck is different? In my view, differential option luck differs from the other three cases (idealism, expensive tastes, and culpable imprudence) I mentioned as follows: whereas there is a prima facie case to be made for the claim that an agent is responsible for being worse off in the accountability sense in these other three cases, no such case can be made with regard to differential option luck per se. To see this, consider the following case.

Example 7. -Ned and Oliver must choose between the following two lotteries. The first offers 100 for sure. The second lottery

and Primary Goods," pp. 159-85; Arthur Ripstein, "Equality, Luck, and Responsibility," Philosophy &Public Affairs (1994): 3-23; Thomas M. Scanlon, "The Significance of Choice," in Tanner Lectures on Human Values, ed. Sterling M. McMurrin (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1988), vol. 8, pp. 197-201.

44. Cohen, "On the Currency of EgalitarianJustice," p. 912. 45. See Samuel Scheffler, "Responsibility, Reactive Attitudes, and Liberalism in Phi-

losophy and Politics," Philosophy &PublicAffairs 21 (1992): 299-323, on Rawls on expensive preferences.

46. See Fleurbaey, p. 40, on negligent Bert who suffers a traffic accident.


offers a 95 percent chance of 100 and a 5 percent chance of 200. Obviously, it will be a fault, prudentially speaking, for them not to gamble, and each does so. Ned ends up with 100, and Oliver ends up with 200.

Let us suppose that this case involves differential option luck. Although we might say that Ned is responsible in the accountability sense for gambling, we cannot say that he is responsible in the accountability sense for being worse off than Oliver after the gamble.47 For to be thus responsible for ending up worse off, Ned would have had to have some control either guidance control or regulative control- over whether he became worse off than Oliver.48 By "regulative control," I mean, roughly, that it was in his power to act otherwise, so that the outcome would have been different in the relevant respect. By "guidance control," I mean, roughly, that his intention to act the way he did caused the relevant, inevitable outcome.49 But clearly Ned had no control over ending up worse off. He had no regulative control over his ending up worse off. Whatever he had done, he would have ended up worse off than Oliver. Nor had Ned guidance control, since his voluntary choice to gamble did not cause him to be worse off. For in the circumstances, his choice to gamble was not a necessary condition of his becoming worse off, and there were, we may suppose, conditions already in place which were sufficient for his becom-

47. Note that for B to be responsible for being worse off than A, B does not have to be responsible for how well off A is. B only has to be responsible for the fact that he is at a level lower than the level at which A happens to be. Thomas Nagel construes egalitarianism differently. He thinks that the principle of equality objects to someone's "being unequal in goods or evils for the possession of which they are not responsible" (Equality and Partiality [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991], pp. 71-72). In his view, "If A gains a benefit for which he is responsible, becoming better off than B, who is not responsible for the change, the resulting inequality is still acceptable, since the principle [of equality] does not object to inequalities for which the parties are not responsible" (ibid.). In my view this is false. Either B had the opportunity to gain a benefit comparable to A's or he did not have such an opportunity. If the latter, then there is, contrary to what Nagel's formulation implies, something bad about the state of affairs in Nagel's example regarding inequality. If the former, then there is not. But my way of stating egalitarianism accommodates this. For in the former case, B is responsible for the fact that he is at a level lower than the level at which A happens to be (even though, of course, he is not responsible for A's being at the level at which A is).

48. Nor does Ned satisfy any plausible epistemic conditions governing moral responsibility for ending up worse off.

49. For the distinction between regulative and guidance control-see John M. Fi- scher, The Metaphysics of Free Will (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994), pp. 132-35; John M. Fischer and Mark Ravizza, Responsibility and Control (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 31. Cases in which someone would have intervened to prevent the agent from intending to act otherwise, had he displayed any sign of acquiring such an intention, illustrate how one can have guidance control over an event even where one lacks regulative control over it. For a classic example of this kind of situation, see Harry G. Frankfurt, "Alternate Pos- sibilities and Responsibility," in his The Importance of What We Care About, pp. 1-10.


ing worse off than Oliver (e.g., Oliver already having bought the winning ticket) 50

This, of course, does not imply that one cannot hold that Ned is responsible in the authority sense for being worse off. But if you think, as I do, that from an egalitarian point of view responsibility in the authority sense requires responsibility in the accountability sense, then you must deny this claim. In general, you must deny that people who are worse off as a result of differential option luck are responsible in the accountability and, hence, authority sense for being worse off. You must therefore deny that differential option luck per se is of no concern from the point of view of equality.

Those who are not persuaded by this argument should concede that there could be people who are both worse off as a result of differential option luck and who exercised neither regulative nor guidance control over whether they ended up worse off. Even so, such skeptics might think that differential option luck is special and that we should simply revise our standard formulations of egalitarianism to accommodate it. Differ- ential option luck is special, it might be suggested, in that responsibility-even in the accountability sense-for an outcome requires neither regulative nor guidance control. It requires only that the gamblers control and choose, in a fully voluntary manner, whether to place themselves in a situation where their fate is beyond their control, a matter of chance. In these circumstances they are responsible (in both senses) for being worse off than others (should they so become).

In my view, however, example 7 shows this reply to be implausible. Egalitarians cannot not plausibly say to Ned that because he controlled and chose in a fully voluntary manner whether to place himself in a situation where his fate was beyond his control and depended upon chance, there is nothing bad, regarding inequality, about his being worse off than Oliver. They cannot say this, because it would have been unreasonable for Ned not to place himself in a situation in which his fate was beyond his control. Hence, if the second lottery offered in example 7 had offered a risk of ending up worse off than one was prior to the gamble say, if the lottery had offered a 5 percent risk of 98 and a 95 percent chance of 200 -it would still have been true that the resulting inequality was bad. A risk of ending up slightly worse off than one was before not- withstanding, it would still have been unreasonable not to participate in the gamble.

50. At this point, I rely on William L. Rowe's account of the necessary and sufficient conditions of S's causing E by doing X: "Either S's doing X is necessary for E's occurrence or any other condition that is sufficient (in the circumstances) for E has a part that is actu- alized only if S does not do X" ("Causing and Being Responsible for What Is Inevitable," American Philosophical Quarterly 26 [1989]: 153-59, p. 155). For reasons I need not discuss here, an account of guidance control that builds on this condition will differ slightly from Fischer's and Ravizza's.


I claimed in the preceding paragraph that there is something bad, from an egalitarian standpoint, about inequality resulting from gambles that it would be unreasonable to decline (for the sort of reasons illus- trated above). In fact, as what I said about control and responsibility suggests, I want to defend a stronger claim. I think there is something bad about inequalities resulting from gambles voluntarily entered into even when it would not have been unreasonable to decline the gamble. It would have been better regarding inequality if they either had not entered into the gamble or had pooled risks. This stronger claim is not supported by the argument in the paragraph above but gains support from the discussion in Section VI.

VI. ON THE BADNESS OF INEQUALITIES THAT REFLECT DIFFERENTIAL EXERCISES OF RESPONSIBILITY

In Section V, I argued that someone who is worse off through bad option luck might well not be responsible in the accountability sense for being worse off. Suppose this claim is false. Even so, we can ask, with regard to any case of differential option luck, or indeed with regard to any case of inequality for which the worst off are responsible: is it in no way bad regarding inequality that some are worse off than others through their own responsibility? By 'responsibility' I have in mind both of the senses I have distinguished. As we have seen, many contemporary egalitarians agree that there is nothing bad, or at least nothing unjust, about someone being worse off through his own responsibility. In my view, egalitarians should reject this view. They have failed to do so primarily because they have failed to appreciate the possibility of a position I shall now elaborate.

Suppose-for the sake of argument-that growing up in slums de- terministically causes you to be worse off and to act in such a way that you will be partly, but only partly, responsible for being worse off. (You often foolishly turn down opportunities to develop marketable talents.) Soft determinists should not have any problems in principle with this supposition. In their view, you can be morally responsible for a conse- quence of an act while being causally determined to perform this act. Libertarians, however, will deny that it is possible for someone to be causally determined to act in such a way that she will be responsible for the consequences of her act (except when the deterministic cause of the act is itself an effect of an earlier exercise of her free will). In their view, responsibility requires origination. So, again for the sake of argument, I will ask libertarians to make a different supposition, namely, that growing up in slums makes it more likely that you will be worse off and that you will act in such ways that you will be partly, but only partly, responsible for being worse off. Surely, libertarians are not committed to the absurd view that contexts of choice make no difference to the choices free agents are likely to make. Nor are they committed to the view that con-


texts of choice make no difference to the extent to which people are responsible for the consequences of their choices. On any view, free will is at best one of a number of factors relevant to moral responsibility. Hence, even if libertarians should object to the first supposition, they ought to be able to accept the second. In what follows it makes no difference which of these two suppositions the reader accepts. (I need not accommodate readers who are hard determinists and hence deny the existence of moral responsibility, since independently of the argument below, they will agree with me that insofar as it is desirable that people are equal in some respect, that respect must be outcome.)

Suppose next that the state can choose between two different social policies. One involves eliminating slums and thereby increasing the probability, or indeed making it the case, that people will be, deservedly, equally well off. The alternative is less ambitious, I believe. It consists in compensating slum dwellers for the extent to which they are worse off through no responsibility of their own. Since, ex hypothesi, growing up in a slum causes you to be partly responsible for or increases the probability that you will be partly responsible for being worse off, the second policy involves letting new generations of slum dwellers grow up and in all likelihood becoming deservedly worse off.51 Now surely, the state of affairs brought about by the first policy is better, from the point of view of equality, than the unequal, but responsibility-tracking, state of affairs that results from the second. Generalizing this point, egalitarians should not be indifferent between the following three states of affairs (all other things being equal) :52

Best. -Equality reflecting equivalent exercises of responsibility (A).

Second-best. -Inequality reflecting differential exercises of responsibility (B).

Third-best. -Inequality (or, for that matter, equality) failing to reflect differential exercises of responsibility (C).

51. One should note that in the scenario I sketch, the state does not simply affect the circumstances in which people choose. Rather, it affects the circumstances under which the character of future generations of people will be formed and, thus, affects how future people will be disposed to choose under given circumstances. Thus, the scenario is coher- ent even on views of personal responsibility according which that responsibility is a matter of how well an individual plays her hand, given her circumstances. For the imagined policy is not simply one in which the state ensures that agents have equally good cards. It is one in which the state renders agents equally responsible in part by making them disposed to play their cards equally well.

52. Suppose that the cost of eliminating slums is enormous, while the transfer pro- gram is very cheap. Here everyone's prospects will be worse if the former option is pursued rather than the latter. In this case, not all other things are equal and egalitarians may not think that eliminating slums is best, all things considered. Still, from the point of view of equality, eliminating slums is best.


It is important to see that there is nothing incoherent about this ranking. It is not as if someone who accepts it does not really believe that a person may truly be responsible for being worse off. After all, B ranks higher than C. It is just that, according to the present ranking, it would have been better regarding inequality if everyone had turned out to be equally deserving and equally well off.53 In my view, this ranking applies to all four of the supposed egalitarian reasons for viewing inequalities in outcomes as not being undesirable as such, including the reason appealing to differential option luck. Note also that acceptance of this ranking does not force one to deny that voluntary choice matters from the point of view of equality. For what one voluntarily chooses determines how one exercises one's responsibility, and it matters that everyone makes equivalent exercises of responsibility. (Where they do not, it matters that inequalities reflect their differential exercises of responsibility.)

Drawing on the distinction between telic and deontic egalitarianism introduced above, some may object to this position. Telic egalitarianism is, in Parfit's words, "likely to have a wider scope." It is likely to imply that any inequality is bad, whomever it obtains between, whatever the inequality is an inequality of, and however it arose.54 Deontic egalitarianism, by contrast, is likely to have a narrower scope. Specifically, it has no problem with inequalities that arise as a result of a just process. One might concede, then, that telic egalitarians should rank A, B, and C as I have suggested, while allowing that deontic egalitarians might not. Deon- tic egalitarians may think that where differences in people's comparative positions reflect nothing but differential exercises of responsibility, no one is being treated unjustly and, therefore, A cannot rank higher with regard to inequality than B. Alternatively, since deontic egalitarians are not committed to the ranking of states of affairs as such, they may main- tain that a process that leads to B is more unjust than one that leads to A.

Even if sound, this reply leaves my general approach to the issues intact. To begin with, telic egalitarianism is more plausible than deontic

53. One might suggest that on Dworkin's view the difference between A and B will simply reflect the fact that people have identical preferences in A and different preferences in B. Since it is hard to see why it is better per se that people have identical preferences; it seems that Dworkin may plausibly deny that B is worse than A. However, the difference between A and B need not simply reflect the fact that people have identical preferences in A and different preferences in B. Worse-off people in B may be so be because they acted imprudently. The suggested Dworkinian response therefore fails.

54. Although this is how Parfit describes telic egalitarianism, he also says that we might add "through no fault or choice of their own" (p. 3, n. 5) to the formulation of telic egalitarianism, i.e., "It is in itself bad if some people are worse off than others" (ibid., p. 3). If we add this qualification, we get a narrower version of telic egalitarianism according to which how an inequality arose makes a difference to whether it is in itself bad. We should then say that the state of affairs in which some are worse off than others through no fault or choice of their own is in itself bad and, thus, that "it is irrelevant how it came about" (ibid., p. 8).


egalitarianism.55 More to the present point, the reply is unsound in con- nection with some cases. To see this, suppose that, in the absence of state intervention, A rather than B will be realized. Surely in this case deontic egalitarians will consider it unjust of the state to intervene and thereby increase the probability that some will be deservedly worse off, when it could have refrained from intervening, with a greater resulting likelihood that all would be deservedly equally well off. So in some cases, at least, B, unlike A, would result from a process that is in conflict with the demands of egalitarian justice. It is therefore wrong to say that there are no cases in which deontic egalitarians are obliged to accept my ranking of states of affairs (or, strictly speaking, that there are no cases in which the process that leads to an outcome of type B is unjust).56

The following feature of the slum policy choice case explains this last fact: that the worse off in B are not solely responsible for being worse off. By "solely responsible," I do not mean fully responsible. There are more ways than one in which one can fail to be solely responsible for an outcome for which one is fully responsible, but the following example will do for purposes of illustration: the members of a gang of assassins, all of whom fired a mortal shot, may each be fully responsible for the death of the assassinated person.57 Each of them can be held fully ac- countable for the death of the assassinated person, and it is not as if the blameworthiness of one assassin's deed is reduced by the fact that others took part in the assassination. Still, none of the assassins is solely responsible for the death, since the action of each of them was sufficient for the death of the victim. Likewise, although slum dwellers in B are, we assume, fully responsible for being worse off, they are not solely responsible for so being. The state chose a social policy which-deterministi- cally or probabilistically-partly explains the fact that the slum dwellers ended up being deservedly worse off. And that policy was unjust.

Let me concede for the argument's sake that some actual cases will involve inequalities for which those between whom the inequality obtains can be considered solely responsible. In that case, the present reply

55. McKerlie, pp. 274-96. 56. Inequality that reflects differential exercise of responsibility and for which the

worse off are solely responsible may constitute a case which deontic egalitarians rank equally with A.

57. There is an objection to my use of the assassins example. The causal chain from the action of each of the assassins to the upshot does not run through the will of any of the other assassins. By way of contrast, the causal chain from the state policy to the worse off's being deservedly worse off is likely to run through the wills of the worse off, and some may think this difference makes it less plausible to claim that the worse off are not solely responsible for being worse off than to claim, of any given assassin, that he is not solely responsible for the death of the victim. I think this objection is confused. It draws illicit support from the libertarian thought that causal links cannot have as middle terms the exercising, by people, of their wills. In any case, the effect of the state policy need not run wholly through the worse off's wills. It may run partly through the options facing the worse off.


to deontic egalitarians will fail some cases. There is no reason, however, to think that all cases of differential option luck belong to this class of cases. For people who are worse off as a result of bad option luck are rarely solely responsible for so being. By its policies, as well as its failure to implement policies, the state can greatly affect just how much differential option luck exists. (Consider the difference, e.g., between running a public-health insurance system and running a privately financed one.) Hence, even if the arguments I have marshaled over the previous three sections against the view that there is nothing undesirable regarding inequality about differential option luck are unsuccessful, it would remain true that precious little differential option luck-and indeed precious little inequality, whether generated by differential option luck or otherwise-would be unobjectionable from the point of view of inequality.

egalitarianism, option luck, and responsibility author(s): kasper … · 2012-08-22 ·...

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