Given the unacceptability of (moralized) contextualism, luck egalitarians need a theory of sanctionable choice that satisfies the moral tyranny constraint. This section proposes the following account: an agent chooses sanctionably just in case she fails to maximize warranted expected distributed advantage assuming full compliance. The task of this section is to explicate each of these italicized concepts and explain why the theory defines sanctionable choice in these terms.
To begin, recall that a theory satisfies the moral tyranny constraint iff it does not enable any person to leave others with lessFC. There are two ways that a theory might enable a person in this way. First, it might grant her the power to directly strip someone of a claim to advantage (and reassign that claim to someone else), thereby changing the percentage of available advantage assigned to each person. Second, and more importantly for these purposes, it might fail to adequately sanction those whose actions would diminish the total quantity of available advantage if all persons were to fully comply with the theory—or, to introduce a bit more shorthand, those who diminshFC (or reduceFC) the total quantity of advantage. To put this point a bit more precisely, such a failure occurs when a person reducesFC the total quantity of advantage by some quantity x but the theory in question holds that her just share is diminished by a quantity that is less than x. This is what a strict egalitarian theory asserts in the case of the spiteful destroyer: even as the destroyer reducesFC the total advantage available by quantity x, the theory holds that she only forfeits a claim to a quantity of \({x} / {n},\) where n is the number of people in the scenario. As a result, if others were to respect her claim, at least some would end up with less advantage than they would have had otherwise.
To avoid moral tyranny, then, a theory must hold that those who reduceFC the total quantity of advantage forfeit a sufficient quantity of advantage such that others will not end up worse off after the transfers demanded by justice have been made. In other words, when people reduceFC the total quantity of advantage, the theory must declare that they choose sanctionably and hold them responsible by reducing the quantity of advantage to which they are entitled. This is the core idea of the theory of sanctionable choice presented above. However, some additional groundwork and a few refinements are needed to both make the theory acceptably egalitarian and ensure that the correct people are held responsible.
To further explicate the theory, it will be helpful to stake out a position regarding the equilisandum of luck egalitarian justice. Specifically, it will be assumed that what is to be equalized is not the advantage persons possess at a particular time or over some specified period, but, rather, their lifetime level of advantage. Thus, there is no injustice in an arrangement where one person labors for the first half of her life while another relaxes, so long as the two switch roles for the second halves of their respective lives. Early on, the two people will have very different quantities of advantage; however, injustice only obtains if things are not adequately evened out in the future.Footnote 13 Given this assumption, any future use of terms like “the distribution of advantage” should be understood as referring to how lifetime advantage is distributed.
With this simplifying assumption in place, it becomes possible to quantify the advantage that an agent destroysFC with any given choice. A natural temptation is to simply calculate the total quantity of advantage destroyedFC by her choice by comparing how much total advantage obtains given her choice to the maximum quantity that would have obtained had she chosen differently (assuming full compliance in both cases). However, this approach is unacceptable for two reasons. First, it would still violate the moral tyranny constraint. Note that a consequence of using this method is that later choices will sometimes determine whether advantage was destroyedFC by an earlier choice. Thus, a theory that calculates lost advantage in this way grants later choosers the power to unilaterally, discretionarily, and foreseeably render an earlier choice sanctionable and thereby leave the earlier chooser with lessFC. Second, this approach would make sanctionable choice a function of luck, as a choice might reduceFC the quantity of total advantage more than a rival choice due to an unforeseeable future event. Given that sanctionable choice requires that the agent be responsible for the state of affairs that grounds her loss of a claim to advantage—and the fact that agents are not responsible for the unforeseeable consequences of their actions—it follows that the sanctionability of a choice cannot be a function of whether or not it reducedFC the total quantity of advantage relative to a counterfactual choice.
The observation that responsibility requires foreseeability suggests an alternative approach to quantifying how much advantage is destroyedFC by a choice: instead of determining whether a choice reducesFC the total quantity of available advantage, one must determine whether that choice is expected to reduceFC the total quantity of advantage. Note that, at any point in time, there is a set of possible ultimate distributions of advantage that could still arise given all preceding events (where distributions extend across lifetimes as described above). Further, for any given choice that an agent might make, each of those distributions will have a particular probability of obtaining conditional on that choice being made and all persons complying with the demands of justice. These conditional probabilities make it possible to calculate the expected advantage of that choice (assuming full compliance) by taking the total quantity of advantage of each distribution, multiplying it by the aforementioned conditional probability, and summing the results. This value can then be compared to the expected advantage value of other rival choices that could have been made. When a person makes a choice that has a lower expected advantage value than a rival choice that she could have made, she can be preliminarily understood as having chosen sanctionably, as her action is expected to diminishFC the total quantity of advantage.Footnote 14
This account of sanctionable choice is merely preliminary because a significant revision must be made to how the expected value of a choice is calculated. To calculate the expected value of a choice, one must assign an advantage value to each of the possible distributions and then multiply that value by the probability of that distribution obtaining conditional on the choice being made and future full compliance with the demands of justice. So far, this advantage value has been set equal to the total quantity of advantage that obtains in that distribution (as bringing about a distribution with less total advantage leaves others with lessFC, ceteris paribus). However, using total advantage obscures how advantage is distributed across persons. This is a problem because the moral tyranny constraint requires that a choice leaves no person with lessFC than they would have had, not people on average. Suppose that agent P could maximizeFC total advantage by ϕ-ing; however, such maximization leaves person Q with nothing and does not allow for any transfers to be made to her despite Q having a claim to a share of the total advantage. Alternatively, P might ψ and bring about a distribution with a modest quantity of total advantage but where all persons’ claims to advantage are respected. In this case, P ϕ-ing would leave Q with lessFC than if P ψ-ed, as full-compliers would not be able to transfer advantage to Q. Given this result, a theory of sanctionable choice must declare ϕ-ing to be sanctionable if it is to satisfy the moral tyranny constraint. Thus, an acceptable theory cannot hold that a person chooses sanctionably if and only if she fails to maximizeFC expected total advantage.Footnote 15
This observation demands that the theory be refined as follows: a sanctionable choice does not merely fail to maximize the expected total advantage under conditions of full compliance but, rather, fails to maximize the total quantity of appropriately distributed advantage under conditions of full compliance. The idea here is as follows. At any given point in time, a luck egalitarian theory of justice will dictate what ratios of possessed advantage are just: each person is entitled to as much advantage as everyone else minus however much advantage she has forfeited due to previous sanctionable choices. When these ratios all obtain, advantage can be said to be appropriately distributed, with fully compliant people being those who do everything they can to realize those ratios. The problem noted immediately above is that certain choices preclude the possibility of fully compliant people distributing advantage appropriately, thereby leaving some people with lessFC than they could have had otherwise. To avoid this form of moral tyranny, the theory must treat such choices as sanctionable in addition to choices that leave others with lessFC by reducingFC the total quantity of transferrable advantage.
This constraint can be satisfied by modifying the advantage values used to calculate the expected advantage of a choice. Specifically any distribution where advantage is appropriately distributed receives an advantage value equal to the total quantity of advantage (i.e., the sum of each person’s lifetime advantage). By contrast, for any distribution U where advantage is inappropriately distributed, its advantage value is calculated via the following procedure. First, of those distributions that have a non-zero probability conditional on all past events obtaining, identify the distribution E that has the greatest total appropriately distributed advantage. Second, identify all those persons in U who have less advantage than they would have had in E. Third, sum the differences between how much advantage each such person has in E and how much she has in U. Fourth, calculate the advantage value of U by subtracting this sum from the total value of E (as this reduction reflects how much lessFC advantage people end up with in U relative to the counterfactual E where their just shares are maximized). Fifth, weight the advantage value of each distribution by multiplying it by the probability that the distribution obtains conditional on the choice in question being made and all persons complying with the demands of justice going forward.Footnote 16 Finally, calculate the expected distributed advantage value of the choice by summing those weighted advantage values.
Once the expected distributed advantage values of each possible choice have been calculated, it becomes possible to compare the value of the actual choice to those of rival choices that could have been made. When the former is less than one of latter values, the agent is responsible for leaving other people with lessFC. Further, this difference quantifies the extent to which the agent is responsible for leaving others with lessFC. Thus, to satisfy the moral tyranny constraint, luck egalitarians can maintain that failing to maximize expected distributed advantage is the necessary and sufficient condition of sanctionable choice, with the agent forfeiting a quantity of advantage equal to (the absolute value of) the difference between the expected distributed advantage value of her choice and the value of the choice with the maximal expected distributed advantage value. Additionally, luck egalitarians must maintain that those whose advantage would have been diminishedFC absent such forfeiture also gain a claim to a quantity of the forfeited advantage—specifically, a quantity equal to the amount that they would otherwise have lost had the sanctionable agent preserved her claim.Footnote 17 The joint effect of this forfeiture and correlative claim acquisition is that full compliers will now redirect the forfeited advantage to those who would have been left worse off in the absence of such forfeiture. Thus, the proposed theory of sanctionable choice precludes the agent from leaving others with lessFC and thereby satisfies the moral tyranny constraint.
One final bit of elaboration is needed to complete the formal account of sanctionable choice. So far, sanctionable choice has been defined in terms of expected distributed advantage—where this value is a function of distributions’ distributed advantage values and the conditional probabilities of those distributions obtaining. However, note that the term “probability” is ambiguous. On the one hand, it might refer to objective probabilities, which, in this case, represent how likely it is in some metaphysical sense that a distribution will arise. Alternatively, it might refer to subjective probabilities representing the agent’s beliefs about how probable it is that a distribution will arise. To eliminate this ambiguity, one can adopt Carl Knight’s suggestion that the proper account of probability to incorporate into luck egalitarian calculations of expected value is warranted subjective probability adjusted for non-culpable incapacity (2013, 1067). Briefly, Knight contends that the relevant probability is that which the agent should have assigned given the evidence available to her—at least, in those cases where she is capable of assessing that evidence (1067). The advantage of this evidentialist view is that it does not differentially hold people responsible for their unchosen epistemic states. By contrast, on the objective probabilities approach, people might be unaware of relevant objective probabilities “through no fault or choice of their own,” and this makes it unfair to hold them responsible for non-maximizing choices (1066). Similarly, using subjective probabilities is unfair because those who are, as a matter of luck, overly confident that their choices are optimal will be found less culpable than those who lack that confidence (1066).
For the purposes of this paper, it is helpful to restate Knight’s argument in terms of responsibility. An agent cannot seemingly be responsible for what she could not know given the evidence available to her. Further, even if she could know certain things, she may not be responsible for failing to form the proper beliefs given certain extenuating circumstances.Footnote 18 Given that responsibility is a necessary condition of sanctionable choice, it follows that an account of sanctionable choice that incorporates calculations of expected value should adopt Knight’s notion of probability.Footnote 19 Thus, sanctionable choice should be understood as a failure to maximize warranted expected distributed advantage (WEDA) under conditions of full compliance.Footnote 20