Abstract
Can outcome equality (say, in welfare) ever be unjust? Despite the extensive inquiry into the nature of luck egalitarianism in recent years, this question is curiously under-explored. Leading luck egalitarians pay little attention to the issue of unjust equalities, and when they do, they appear not to speak in one voice. To facilitate the inquiry into the potential injustice of equalities, the paper introduces two rival interpretations of egalitarianism: the responsibility view, which may condemn equalities as unjust (when they reflect unequal levels of personal responsibility); and, the non-responsibility view, which does not. It then teases out the implications of these two views, in the hope of establishing that the latter is at least as plausible as the former. The paper thus establishes that the egalitarian ideal can be plausibly formulated in a way that condemns only (certain) inequalities but never equalities, and that this formulation is both coherent and attractive.
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Notes
I say ‘functionings’ rather than ‘capabilities’ because the latter contains in it an element of opportunity. See my discussion of opportunities in the next couple of sentences.
I should add that later, in his penultimate book, Cohen seems to characterize luck egalitarianism as concerned only with inequalities: ‘[…] what has been called luck egalitarianism, which is the view that identifies distributive justice with an allocation which extinguishes inequalities that are due to luck rather than to choice.’ Cohen 2008, p. 300, emphasis added.
I acknowledge, nevertheless, that there is probably a strong link between what pattern one finds to be objectionable and what pattern one would advocate as a remedy.
The view may also fall under what Nils Holtug and Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen have termed ‘responsibility-agnostic egalitarianism’ (Holtug and Lippert-Rasmussen 2007, p. 20).
I put ‘brute’ in parenthesis because some egalitarians hold the view that all differential luck ought to be neutralized, that is, both brute and option luck. See Fleurbaey 2001, esp. pp. 513–22; Fleurbaey 1995; Fleurbaey 2008; Lippert-Rasmussen 2001; Lippert-Rasmussen 2005, p. 259; Barry 2008; Cappelen and Tungodden 2006a, p. 394; Cappelen and Tungodden 2006b. I find this view to be implausible (see my Segall 2010, ch. 3), but that debate is immaterial for the purposes of this paper, so I shall set it aside.
Note that I resist formulating the second half of the sentence to read: ‘it is unjust that one is equally well off as others through no choice of one’s own’. That formulation would have implied that there is something unjust in a situation whereby a person is equal to everyone else despite that person having no choice or say about her situation. I am grateful to Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen for pointing this out to me.
This seems to be Thomas Nagel’s view, for example: ‘What seems bad is not that people should be unequal in advantages or disadvantages generally, but that they should be unequal in the advantages or disadvantages for which they are not responsible’ (Nagel 1991, p. 71).
I am grateful to Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen for helping me to clarify this point.
The following discussion is an elaboration of an example I discussed in Segall 2010, pp. 17-18.
Of course, the story may be structured a little differently to say that Lazy has in fact taken a gamble that a coconut will roll to her. (I am grateful to Marc Fleurbaey for raising this point). But I assume, as in Vallentyne’s equivalent example, that the coconut was pure good brute luck. I shall consider a slight variation on this later on.
I should say that, for what it’s worth, the view I put forward here seems to be more consistent with the luck egalitarian reading of John Rawls. Rawls, of course, was no luck egalitarian, but luck egalitarianism is often read as ‘taking Rawlsian justice to its logical conclusion’. Namely, Rawls is held as the first egalitarian to recognize the moral arbitrariness of factors for which we are not responsible, such as talents. (See Rawls 1999, for example, p. 63). In a way, Rawls’s theory of justice can be read as the twin ideas of making justice independent of both morally arbitrary factors such as luck and, on the other hand, of the ideal of desert. (See also Hurley 2004, p. 134). A luck egalitarian who wants to take this twin Rawlsian ideal to its logical conclusion should, it follows, endorse NRV, rather than a formulation that enjoins egalitarianism with desert. Later, I shall point out how RV may be seen as undertaking precisely the latter.
This objection was put to me by Kristin Voigt.
The fact that Lazy is worse off through no fault of his own now is obvious, among other things, from the fact that even if he would have made the effort of trying to catch a fish of his own, and were successful (as much as Prudent was in doing the same), his level of welfare would still fall below that of Prudent.
Alternatively referred to as the ‘counterfactual’ reading of the luck-neutralizing approach.
See Hurley 2004, p. 156. Notice that I am not saying that RV is committed to this intrapersonal view of egalitarianism. I am only saying that it is committed to the view that the equal distribution here should be upset and a fresh inequality generated. By invoking the intrapersonal view I merely seek to establish that refraining from doing so, as NRV recommends, is not counter-intuitive.
Lake correctly writes: ‘In interpreting the egalitarian intuition, egalitarians must decide whether the target of their concern is equality or whether it is compensation.’ Lake 2001, p. 103.
I say ‘close’ because there is no requirement, even on RV, to restore her to the exact same level of welfare since she was indeed less than perfectly prudent. So perhaps we ought to help her rebuild the house but not pay for the burnt curtains, say.
Again, given that he wasn’t reckless on this one instance.
This is only true, of course, in so far as there is some inequality in the society, such as between Smith and Roberts (who has been prudent, as well as lucky, throughout), say. If the society in question is only made up of Smith and Jones, and if now there is equality between them, no compensation would be owed to Smith, I concede.
I use ‘excuse’ in the same sense used by Cohen in this context. ‘[…] genuine choice excuses otherwise unacceptable inequalities’ (Cohen 1989, p. 951).
We might add that a principle that is concerned with matching individuals’ comparative welfare to their comparative responsibility would find it difficult to revert to a local rather than a global account. For it is not obvious why we ought to restrict the principle to local events given that the rationale is to reward individuals for their prudence. NRV, it is easy to see, forswears any such rationale, and is thus not committed to a global account of responsibility. That is why, I believe, RV belongs in the lower half of our table, and NRV in the upper half.
Again, assuming he is now worse off than someone else, say Roberts.
See again note 11.
Of course, the firm could have stated in advance the exact opposite policy, namely that wages would correlate to hours of work. But that does not refute my argument, for I never claimed that the responsibility view is unjust, only that it is not a requirement of justice.
I say ‘socialist’ rather than ‘communist’ in view, of course, that the latter requires not equal pay (even for different work) but rather ‘from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs’. The relevant point for us here, though, is that whether or not luck egalitarians should aspire for that latter communist pattern of distribution, they must certainly prefer the socialist pattern (equal pay is never unjust) to the pattern that matches differentiated pay to differentiated effort. I am grateful to a referee of this journal for pointing this out to me.
Suppose we reverse the story: what happens when Talented works 8 h while Untalented works 4? Pre-tax their incomes are, respectively, 80 k, and 10 k. Since there is, obviously, inequality, taxation would kick in. Looking at the table, Talented would be left with 60 k, which leaves 20 k to be handed to Untalented either in its entirety or, as the Table requires, handing 15 k of which to Untalented. In either case, since effort is unequal there is no requirement here to restore equality between the two. I thank a referee of this journal for pointing this out to me.
Thomas Pogge, in his critique of Cohen, entertains a similar possibility (Pogge 2000, p. 153).
And neither does Cohen (see Cohen 2008, ch. 5). On p. 398, Cohen also remarks (in reply to Pogge’s criticism): ‘This conjures up a nightmare scenario in which the duty that I advocate is interpreted as making the productive work as much as they can to make the wages of the less well paid as high as possible’. (p. 402). Later that page Cohen refers to this view as ‘crazy’. Note that even Joseph Carens whose work (Carens 1981) is often cited as the closest that egalitarians come to holding such a position (namely, that individuals have a moral duty to work in the line of work to which their talents and skills make them most suitable) has subsequently modified his position. Carens’s revised position is that individuals should make ‘good use of their skills’, which is weaker than a duty to work in what one is best at (see Carens 1986).
The critic might say that invoking a state of utter abundance does not prove anything in the present context for the simple reason that it deviates from Humean circumstances of justice. Justice simply does not obtain in a state of utter abundance and thus the question “should egalitarians condemn an equal distribution that reflects unequal prudence?” becomes unintelligible under these circumstances, thereby saving the skin of the equality-condemning egalitarian. Now, even if this objection is correct, it need not detain us here, I maintain. The reason is that the type of egalitarians with whom I am concerned here, namely luck egalitarians, in fact reject the whole premise of the ‘circumstances of justice’, and reject the claim that these circumstances inform what justice consists of (see Cohen 2008, pp. 331–6).
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For comments and suggestions on earlier drafts of this paper I am grateful to Iwao Hirose, Adi Koplovitz, Ori Lev, Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen, Orsolya Reich, Re’em Segev, Kristin Voigt, and two anonymous referees for this journal.
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Segall, S. Why Egalitarians Should Not Care About Equality. Ethic Theory Moral Prac 15, 507–519 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-011-9306-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-011-9306-7