Verteilungsgerechtigkeit, Verantwortung und Zufall: Die Bedeutung von Risikoakzeptanz für den Glücksegalitarismus

Luck egalitarians like Ronald Dworkin and G. A. Cohen claim that the influence of luck on the distribution of goods or welfare has to be equalized, whereas inequality must be accepted if the subjects bear responsibility for it. The paper investigates how this claim should be interpreted and if it is plausible. Analyzing several examples, I try to show that the spectrum of pertinent cases is much more limited than Dworkin and Cohen think. Sometimes it seems as if someone is responsible for being in a worse position than someone else, while in fact they didn't have equal opportunities. Fitting cases of responsibility for inequality can be found when we focus on the outcomes of calculated gambles (Dworkin: option luck). But why, and what exactly are cases in point? What distinguishes the risk-taking of someone who buys a lottery ticket from that of a peasant who cultivates a piece of land, knowing that a storm might ruin the crop? I try to demonstrate that an ethically relevant difference occurs when the attitude towards risk differs. Would the agent prefer to receive the expected utility safely, or would she rather gamble?

Luck egalitarianism without moral tyranny

Luck egalitarians contend that, while each person starts out with a claim to an equal quantity of advantage, she can forfeit this claim by making certain choices. The appeal of luck egalitarianism is that it seems to satisfy what this paper calls the moral tyranny constraint. According to this constraint, any acceptable theory of justice must preclude the possibility of an agent unilaterally, discretionarily, and foreseeably leaving others with less advantage under conditions of full compliance with the theory. This paper argues that claim forfeiture is built into luck egalitarianism specifically to preclude such moral tyranny. However, it contends that the dominant interpretation of luck egalitarianism fails to fully satisfy the moral tyranny constraint. It offers an alternative interpretation that both eliminates the possibility of moral tyranny and rescues the position from two other prominent objections that have been directed against luck egalitarianism.

Luck Egalitarianism: Two Lines of Critique

This article is devoted to the stream in political philosophy which came to be known as “luck egalitarianism”. Luck egalitarians are concerned with the questions of distributive justice; their main idea is that no person should be worse-off due to factors which they are unable to influence. Luck egalitarians express this idea via the dichotomy of brute and option luck. The goal of the article is to describe two main lines of critique which luck egalitarianism encounters, and to assess which one is the most dangerous for this movement. Some authors criticize luck egalitarianism from a moral standpoint. They believe that it is overly cruel towards those who suffer due to unfortunate but free choices, humiliating towards those whom it deems to be worthy of help, and that it contradicts our moral intuitions concerning the question of what do people who engage in socially necessary, yet risky professions, deserve. Another important problem for this trend of political thought has to do with metaphysical criticism. Luck egalitarians claim that a person is not responsible not only for the status of her family, her gender, ethnicity, etc., but also for her talents and abilities. The question arises; is there anything for what a person can be genuinely responsible for? Thus, luck egalitarianism encounters the problem of determinism and free will. This problem threatens the identity of luck egalitarianism: if free will does not exist or if it cannot be identified, then the key dichotomy of brute and option luck is meaningless. The article demonstrates that it is the criticism of the second kind which currently poses the greatest problem for luck egalitarianism.

Dworkin’s Hypothetical Underemployment Insurance

Chapter 5 explains and then rejects Ronald Dworkin’s hypothetical underemployment insurance scheme and the family of views—commonly dubbed luck egalitarianism—it inspired. This chapter argues that Dworkin and his followers were motivated in large part by the idea that it is not unfair for those who work harder to receive more pay. Yet as the chapter shows, Dworkin’s insurance scheme cannot accommodate this intuition, and a similar problem infects the views of Dworkin’s followers. In order to accommodate the intuition, their accounts must be supplemented, and once so supplemented, choice no longer plays a justificatory role. Thus, luck egalitarians must choose: either choice justifies income inequalities but the hard-work intuition cannot be accommodated, or else the hard-work intuition can be accommodated but choice does not justify income inequalities.

The Point of Justice

John Rawls famously claimed that “the accidents of natural endowment and the contingencies of social circumstance” are “arbitrary from a moral point of view.” Luck egalitarians believe that a conception of justice that eliminates the effects of circumstance but not of choice captures that intuition better than Rawls’s own principles of justice. This chapter argues that the opposite is the case. We can learn from Rawls that one cannot overcome moral arbitrariness in social life by using a morally arbitrary distinction between choice and circumstance. Furthermore, the chapter argues that the incompatibility between these two approaches points to a deeper difference between a deontological and a teleological paradigm that is crucial for the debate between relational and nonrelational notions of political and social justice.

Is it unjust that elderly people suffer from poorer health than young people? Distributive and relational egalitarianism on age-based health inequalities

In any normal population, health is unequally distributed across different age groups. Are such age-based health inequalities unjust? A divide has recently developed within egalitarian theories of justice between relational egalitarians focusing on the egalitarian nature of social relations and luck egalitarians focusing on the distribution of goods such as welfare or resources. I argue that the most plausible versions of these two theories – ‘whole lives’ luck egalitarianism and time-relative relational egalitarianism – imply conflicting answers to the opening question. Under realistic conditions, the former implies that, from the perspective of luck egalitarian justice, it is better that old people are disadvantaged by bad health than that they are not, whereas the latter theory implies that many age-based health inequalities involve unjust, non-egalitarian social relations and are therefore unjust. Hence, I contend that different egalitarian concerns must be balanced against one another, suggesting that the relational concern has greater weight in this particular case. Along the way, I propose a social model of old age analogous to the social model of disability and suggest that a whole lives version of relational egalitarianism might also be attractive.

CATERING FOR RESPONSIBILITY: BRUTE LUCK, OPTION LUCK, AND THE NEUTRALITY OBJECTION TO LUCK EGALITARIANISM

The distinction between brute luck and option luck is fundamental for luck egalitarianism. Many luck egalitarians write as if it could be used to specify which outcomes people should be held responsible for. In this paper, I argue that the distinction can’t be used this way. In fact, luck egalitarians tend to rely instead on rough intuitive judgements about individual responsibility. This makes their view vulnerable to what’s known as the neutrality objection. I show that attempts to avoid this objection are unsuccessful. I conclude that until it provides a better account of attributing responsibility, luck egalitarianism remains incomplete.

Genetics and Justice: Must One Theory Fit All Contexts?

Appeals to social justice that argue medicine and healthcare should have certain priorities and not others are common. It is an obvious question to ask: What does social justice demand of the new genetic technologies? However, it is important to note that there are many theories and sub-theories of justice. There are utilitarian theories, libertarian theories, and egalitarian theories. There are so-called luck egalitarians, equality-as-fairness thinkers, and capability theorists, with each having his or her own distinctive approach to the distribution of medical goods and technologies, and to healthcare priorities. This article argues that the discussion surrounding this question is potentially hampered by an implicit assumption that if one theory of justice is applicable in one context, then it must also be applicable in others. Instead, it is proposed that one adopt the stance, influenced by Michael Waltzer, that different theories with their opposing principles may be applicable to different questions regarding justice and genetics. The specific view advanced is that to answer questions about what justice requires regarding the therapeutic and enhancement use of genetic techniques, a method of reflective equilibrium can show how intuitions, in context, may support different theories of justice. When particular pre-theoretic ethical judgments are balanced against the theories that might explain or justify them, and are in accord with what seems emotionally acceptable, then it can be seen how different general theories may be applicable in the different contexts in which questions of justice and genetics arise.

Social Equality and the Global Society

Are democratic egalitarians bound to endorse statism? It seems so, since they insist on democratic reciprocity, and no such relation exists in the global realm. Would it not, then, be inconsistent to endorse both cosmopolitanism and democratic egalitarianism? Democratic egalitarians seemingly face a dilemma: either they accept statism, or they must explain why not. Luck egalitarianism, by contrast, seemingly grounds more straightforwardly the claim that justice is global in scope. My thesis is twofold: first, I show that democratic egalitarians can escape the dilemma, to the effect that, as such, they need be committed neither to statism nor to cosmopolitanism, and that luck egalitarians are not as shielded from the dilemma as it might seem. Second, I defend the plausibility of global social egalitarianism against both statist variants of democratic egalitarianism and luck egalitarianism, and suggest a form of division of labor between domestic and global justice.