Responsibility-Sensitive Egalitarian Justice and the Labour Market

Abstract

Responsibility-sensitive egalitarians consider it unjust for individuals to be disadvantaged relative to others because of personal characteristics for which they are not responsible. Justice requires «equal access to advantages»: if everybody has equal access to advantage, differential advantage must reflect genuine choices for which people are responsible.¹ How can a responsibility-sensitive conception of equality guide a government in the design of its distributive policies? I will answer that question for a very simple world, called Simplia.