Abstract
Luck egalitarian theories of justice are frequently criticised for being unduly harsh on people who experience disadvantage as a result of their responsible choices. According to the ‘abandonment objection’, luck egalitarians are committed to abandoning even very severely disadvantaged persons as long as responsibility figures in the right way in the genesis of their disadvantage. This article makes a distinction between two views that are insufficiently distinguished in the literature. Weak luck egalitarianism is the view that justice requires us to cater to the claims of victims of bad brute luck before there is an obligation to assist responsible victims. Strong luck egalitarianism is the view that responsibility robustly determines the requirements of justice. The abandonment objection presumably targets the less plausible strong view. It does not seem to touch the more plausible weak view. The article consequently argues that the abandonment objection is either trivial or wrong.
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Notes
Earlier versions of this article were presented at the Political Theory seminar at the University of Gothenburg and the National Centre for Priority Setting in Health Care at Linköping University. I am grateful to the audiences for helpful comments. I have benefitted particularly from the input offered by Gunnar Falkemark, Niklas Juth and two anonymous referees.
This description of the core luck egalitarian principle is representative of the way it is usually put by proponents and critics alike. See for example, Cohen (1989, p. 931); Arneson (2000, p. 339); Dworkin (2000, p. 287); Scheffler (2005, p. 6).
Nothing I say in this article will require me to take a stand on the appropriate ‘currency’ of justice (see Hurley, 2003 for an overview). I will speak simply of agents being ‘better’ or ‘worse off ’ than others, and will use generic labels such as ‘goods’ or ‘advantage’ to denote the thing(s) that make them so. But it should also be stressed that, unless otherwise stated, I treat luck egalitarianism as a fully comparative view. It concerns how well people fare relative others, not how well they fare in an absolute sense, so that if, say, everyone suffers the same brute luck disadvantage, then there is no injustice of the kind luck egalitarians want to correct. Note that this (standard) way of putting it raises some questions about how we understand the abandonment objection. What seems objectionable in a case such as Susan's is not necessarily that she is worse off than others (though that might be objectionable too) but that she is in an absolute sense badly off. Hence, it might be argued that portraying luck egalitarianism as a fully comparative view misconstrues the force of the abandonment objection. However, the abandonment objection clearly assumes that some are comparatively better off than the purportedly abandoned person, and thus in a position to help. Otherwise the objection does not make sense; if all were as badly off as Susan we could say that no sacrifice would be justified or required from anyone.
‘Luck egalitarianism’ is not one monolithic view, but this principle captures the core on which different versions of luck egalitarianism arguably agree. See Segall (2010) for a good overview of various intra-luck egalitarian debates.
What Anderson calls the ‘hard-line’ form of luck egalitarianism is, as I will argue, equivalent to strong luck egalitarianism.
The relationship between justice and charity is complicated. The view I refer to here takes charity to be something that is not required of us. Other views are possible. Bou-Habib (2006, pp. 247–248) argues that we may have duties of charity but that these duties, unlike those of justice, are non-enforceable. Buchanan (1987) offers a valuable critique of the very distinction.
Voigt (2007, pp. 394–396). See also Arneson (1999); Vallentyne (2002); Barry (2006); Stemplowska (2009).
Disentangling mixed luck presents formidable problems. The best way forward seems to be Roemer's (1998) ‘theory of types’, which famously compares differential outcomes only among people who belong to the same brute luck ‘type’.
But see Walker (2010) for a contrary view.
For a review of luck egalitarian responses, see for example, Segall (2010). Stemplowska (2009) partially bites the bullet, as will I do below.
Compulsory insurance schemes, under which responsible victims at least co-finance their own assistance, are one way to achieve this (Dworkin, 2002, p. 14; Bou-Habib, 2006).
The distinction I am proposing resembles Carl Knight's distinction between Paretian and non-Paretian luck egalitarianism (Knight, 2009, pp. 229–233), which I only encountered at a late stage of writing this manuscript. Knight defines Paretian luck egalitarianism as ‘full responsibility-sensitivity only when there is no relaxation of responsibility-sensitivity that would advantage at least one person without disadvantaging any other’ (p. 231). Non-Paretian luck egalitarianism instead holds that responsibility–sensitivity should be pursued even when it is bad for someone and good for nobody. The latter view is pretty much identical to what I call strong luck egalitarianism, and indeed the very inefficiency-charges that Knight levels against this view are the same I will raise. The more novel weak interpretation of luck egalitarianism, however, differs from Paretian luck egalitarianism in its commitment to that it would be good if all were equally well off. As we shall see, this view thus holds that responsibility-sensitivity is only appropriately in play when all cannot be made equally well off.
A full-fledged theory of justice would of course take a far broader view, where inequalities besides those that stem from diabetes matter.
Many other factors might affect how we react to this example, such as how old Adam and Bob are, how many children they have, or how nice people they are. It is assumed throughout that the only salient difference between Adam and Bob is their respective responsibility for the illness.
One reason why lotteries might be justified is that it would be unwieldy to figure out who is and who is not responsible for an outcome. As I am focusing on the principled issue I shall not deal with epistemic issues of this sort. An additional worry sometimes raised is that since people may suffer major harm as a result of very minor imprudence, luck egalitarians accept ‘punishments’ that are far out of proportion to what the responsible victims are guilty of (Fleurbaey, 1995, p. 40; Goodin, 1985). But this is only a problem on a desert-based view of justice, which, as we shall see below, luck egalitarians need not endorse. They need not deny that Bob suffers more than his imprudence merits – they only say that he has less of a claim, or no claim, on public health care resources.
Stemplowska (2009) defends a view that seems to share some commonalities with WLE. See also Segall (2010, pp. 14–19) and Lippert-Rasmussen (2001, p. 576).
This is identical to what Knight (2009) calls ‘full responsibilitarianism’.
Segall (2010) has recently offered an analysis of luck egalitarianism and desert that is similar to the one I offer here.
See also Voigt, who argues that ‘even if all that is required to save [a person] is a costless snap of the finger, the luck egalitarian cannot provide this without violating the requirements of her theory of equality’ (2007, p. 403). Knight (2009) argues that the letter of luck egalitarian writing is in fact consistent with SLE.
Thanks to a reviewer for inviting me to clarify this point.
By moderate scarcity Rawls intended that ‘Natural and other resources are not so abundant that schemes of cooperation become superfluous, nor are conditions so harsh that the fruitful ventures must inevitably break down’ (Rawls, 1999, p. 110).
I am grateful to Niklas Juth for having suggested these versions of WLE.
Another kind of reasoning appeals to a sufficentarian threshold. Segall (2010) has recently argued that luck egalitarians can overcome the abandonment objection by recognising a prior duty (not intrinsic to luck egalitarianism) to meet everyone’s basic needs. Note, however, that while introducing a sufficiency threshold is one way of handling need and responsibility, we cannot collapse moderate WLE into sufficentarianism. Moderate WLE can break ties between ‘ballpark cases’ both above and below the threshold. In particular, it cares about inequalities in a comparative sense and not merely about absolute levels of advantage. The same reason serves to distinguish it from prioritarianism, though this is more subtle.
For an argument that luck egalitarianism should only deal with inequalities, see Segall (2010). For a contrary view, see Cohen (2006).
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Acknowledgements
I gratefully acknowledge the financial support provided by the Swedish Research Council and the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation.
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Duus-Otterström, G. Weak and strong luck egalitarianism. Contemp Polit Theory 11, 153–171 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1057/cpt.2011.32
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/cpt.2011.32