Abstract
According to all-luck egalitarianism, the differential distributive effects of both brute luck, which defines the outcome of risks which are not deliberately taken, and option luck, which defines the outcome of deliberate gambles, are unjust. Exactly how to correct the effects of option luck is, however, a complex issue. This article argues that (a) option luck should be neutralized not just by correcting luck among gamblers, but among the community as a whole, because it would be unfair for gamblers as a group to be disadvantaged relative to non-gamblers by bad option luck; (b) individuals should receive the warranted expected results of their gambles, except insofar as individuals blamelessly lacked the ability to ascertain which expectations were warranted; and (c) where societal resources are insufficient to deliver expected results to gamblers, gamblers should receive a lesser distributive share which is in proportion to the expected results. Where all-luck egalitarianism is understood in this way, it allows risk-takers to impose externalities on non-risk-takers, which seems counterintuitive. This may, however, be an advantage as it provides a luck egalitarian rationale for assisting ‘negligent victims’.
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Notes
The term ‘all-luck egalitarianism’ is from Shlomi Segall (2010, ch. 3). Richard Arneson (2007; 1999, 490–91) has endorsed one form of all-luck egalitarianism and criticized another. John Roemer (1996, 276–78; 1998, ch. 8) also appears to endorse a version of the view, apparently assuming, for instance, that an equal opportunity principle will pool risks among smokers. However, Roemer’s settled position leaves it up to society to decide which factors should be treated as potentially compensation-entitling, and hence he is best interpreted as agnostic on option luck. Larry Temkin (2011) and Alexander Cappelen and Ole Frithjof Norheim (2005) defend all-luck egalitarianism, though the latter do so without distinguishing it from the more common brute-luck egalitarianism. Peter Vallentyne (2002, 539–40) refers to the view as ‘equality of luck’. Interestingly, Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen (2005, 259) mentions a responsibility-insensitive form of all-luck egalitarianism. The argument of the present article leaves it open whether corrections for the results of option luck are due regardless of individuals’ responsibility for them, or because individuals cannot be held responsible for them.
It has been suggested to me that this case implicitly appeals to differences in intentionality between the house burner and the investor. But even where intentionality is constant, bad option luck appears to call for correction in a way that more straightforward results of choice do not. For instance, there seems a stronger case for (state) assistance to someone who has put their money in a savings account at a long-established bank that has unexpectedly collapsed, than there is for assistance to someone who has the same profit-making intention, but who has followed a strategy that is bound to fail (e.g. buying many lottery tickets and ‘reinvesting’ all winnings in more lottery tickets).
I thank an anonymous referee for this point.
In later work Fleurbaey (2011, 86; see also Fleurbaey 2008) favours an ‘egalitarian-equivalent’ criterion, which, ‘[f]or any individual, ask[s] what level of external treatment (e.g. transfers) would maintain her current level of outcome if she had a reference (say, average) level of circumstance characteristics. Then give priority, in the sense of the maximin criterion, to those individuals with the least favourable level of external treatment in this counterfactual computation’. Whether this view compensates for bad quasi-gambles or bad option luck generally will depend on whether they are classified as responsibility characteristics or circumstance characteristics.
I owe this point to an anonymous referee.
I say ‘provisionally’ as this formula must be adjusted for cases of incapacity and scarcity; see below.
For discussion of the difficulty of combining accounts of expected value with non-compensation for option luck see Lippert-Rasmussen 2001, 566–70.
This unfairness may arise even where individuals are similarly ignorant; under such conditions they may understandably make different choices arbitrarily (see Vallentyne 2002, 536).
This point was made by Shlomi Segall (private communication).
In some cases, two or more expectations may be (equally) warranted. In such cases it seems acceptable to use the mean expectation for distributive purposes. For simplicity I set aside cases of multiple warrant.
This formulation, and much else in this paragraph, draws on Robertson 2011.
The exact specification of when belief in a probability is warranted is not a task of a theory of justice. Just as luck egalitarians typically leave responsibility as a problem to be solved by metaphysicians, so I believe they should leave warrant as a problem to be solved by epistemologists.
For an attempt to defuse the distributive effects of variations in individuals’ initial dispositions see Vallentyne 2008.
Hence one type of non-culpable incapacity is non-culpable on account of the fact that its bearer made a choice while non-culpably incapacitated, and that incapacity was non-culpable on account of the fact that its bearer made a choice while non-culpably incapacitated, and so on. This is not, of course, an infinite regress: each step must reflect an actual capacity-affecting choice a person has made while non-culpably incapacitated.
Peter Vallentyne (2011, 181) suggests the alternative position that, where individuals are not responsible for their false beliefs, ‘the presence of imaginary outcomes can, relative to the value of the foreseen impact, shrink the value for which the agent is responsible’. It is hard to see how these beliefs can have such a role within a responsibility-sensitive view without making some worse off than others through no fault or choice of their own. For instance, two individuals might make identical choices, one believing that it has moderately beneficial results, the other believing that it has only slightly beneficial results. If the choices are actually highly beneficial, Vallentyne’s position suggests that the first individual receives the moderate benefit that she anticipated but the second individual only receives the slight benefit that she anticipated (see Vallentyne 2011, 183–4). That the second individual more significantly underestimated the amount of benefit than did the first cannot be described as the former’s fault or choice, as she is, we assume, not responsible for her false belief. This suggests either that responsibility is not as Vallentyne describes, or that it is as Vallentyne describes, but that egalitarian justice does not always respond to responsibility. The position in the text is consistent with both stances.
An alternative is to reinterpret luck egalitarianism as not objecting to brute-luck inequalities, in which case providing for basic needs unconditionally might not conflict with luck egalitarianism (see Segall 2010; 2012). This is, however, at odds with luck egalitarian’s distinctive opposition to the differential distributive effects of brute luck, and problematic in other ways; see Knight 2011. Moreover, even if we allow this move, it does not yield a luck egalitarian justification for assisting negligent victims. It only removes the conflict between a non-luck egalitarian justification and luck egalitarianism.
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Acknowledgments
Research for this article was supported by the British Academy. An antecedent of the paper was presented at the University of Stirling. I thank the participants on that occasion, and especially Simon Robertson for discussion which influenced the present treatment of probabilities. Shlomi Segall and two anonymous referees also provided very helpful written comments.
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Knight, C. Egalitarian Justice and Expected Value. Ethic Theory Moral Prac 16, 1061–1073 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-013-9415-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-013-9415-6