Wikipedia Deep Dive

Luck egalitarianism

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The Unfairness of Being Born

Imagine two babies born on the same day, in the same city. One arrives in a hospital with attentive doctors and goes home to a house full of books. The other is born in a crowded clinic and goes home to a family struggling to pay rent. Neither baby chose their circumstances. Neither baby earned their starting position in life.

This scenario haunts a particular school of political philosophy called luck egalitarianism. At its core, luck egalitarianism makes a deceptively simple claim: it's unfair for some people to be worse off than others through no fault of their own.

That sounds almost obvious when you say it out loud. Of course it's unfair. But the implications of taking this idea seriously are profound, controversial, and surprisingly difficult to work out in practice.

The Natural Lottery

The roots of luck egalitarianism trace back to the twentieth-century philosopher John Rawls, whose 1971 book "A Theory of Justice" remains one of the most influential works of political philosophy ever written. Rawls noticed something that many people feel intuitively but rarely articulate precisely: your natural talents and the circumstances of your birth are, from a moral standpoint, completely arbitrary.

He called this the "natural lottery."

You didn't choose to be born with a gift for mathematics or an ear for music. You didn't choose to grow up in a stable household or an unstable one. You didn't choose your height, your baseline health, or whether your brain chemistry would predispose you to depression or anxiety. These things were assigned to you by forces entirely beyond your control—genetics, geography, the economic circumstances of your parents, the political stability of your country at the moment of your birth.

Rawls argued that because these factors are morally arbitrary—because nobody deserves their natural advantages or disadvantages—a just society shouldn't allow them to determine how well people's lives go. The person who happens to be born smart shouldn't automatically get more than the person who happens to be born less intellectually gifted, any more than the person born with blue eyes should get more than the person born with brown eyes.

Enter the Luck Egalitarians

Rawls planted the seed, but he didn't quite arrive at luck egalitarianism himself. That development came through philosophers like Ronald Dworkin, Richard Arneson, and Gerald Cohen in the 1980s and 1990s.

These thinkers took Rawls's insight about arbitrary factors and pushed it further. They developed what became known as luck egalitarianism: the view that justice requires us to compensate people for disadvantages that arise from bad luck while holding them responsible for disadvantages that arise from their own choices.

This distinction between luck and choice is absolutely central to the theory. It's also where things get complicated.

Consider two people who end up equally poor. One grew up in desperate circumstances, never had access to good education, and faced discrimination at every turn. The other grew up with every advantage, went to excellent schools, but chose to drop out, spent their money recklessly, and never held a job for more than a few months.

A luck egalitarian would say these two cases are morally different. The first person's poverty is a matter of bad luck—circumstances they didn't choose and couldn't control. Society owes them compensation. The second person's poverty is a consequence of their choices. They had opportunities and squandered them. Society doesn't owe them the same assistance.

Two Kinds of Luck

Philosophers working in this tradition developed more precise vocabulary. They distinguish between what they call "brute luck" and "option luck."

Brute luck refers to outcomes that you couldn't have anticipated or avoided. Being struck by lightning while walking down the street is brute luck. Being born with a genetic disease is brute luck. Having your home destroyed by an earthquake is brute luck. These things just happen to you, regardless of what you do.

Option luck, by contrast, refers to outcomes that result from calculated gambles you chose to take. If you invest your savings in a risky stock and lose everything, that's option luck—bad option luck, but option luck nonetheless. You knew the risks and took them anyway. If you choose to become a professional surfer knowing the dangers, and you're injured by a shark, there's an element of option luck in your misfortune.

For luck egalitarians, justice demands that we compensate people for bad brute luck but not necessarily for bad option luck. You chose to gamble; you bear the consequences.

But What Exactly Should We Equalize?

Here's where luck egalitarians disagree among themselves, sometimes fiercely. They agree that we should neutralize the effects of bad luck, but they disagree about what we're trying to make equal.

Should we equalize material resources? That's roughly Ronald Dworkin's view. Dworkin developed an elaborate theory involving hypothetical insurance markets. He asked: what insurance would rational people buy against various kinds of bad luck if they didn't know what luck they'd have? Whatever that hypothetical insurance would cover, society should actually provide.

Or should we equalize welfare—people's actual well-being or happiness? Richard Arneson argued for equality of opportunity for welfare. The idea is that everyone should have equal chances to achieve well-being, though they might end up with different levels of welfare depending on their choices.

Gerald Cohen proposed yet another measure: equal access to advantage. Advantage, for Cohen, is broader than either resources or welfare. It includes both objective goods and subjective satisfaction.

These debates might seem academic, but they matter enormously for policy. Consider someone who has expensive tastes—someone who can only be happy drinking fine wine and eating at expensive restaurants. If we're trying to equalize welfare, do we owe this person more resources to achieve the same level of happiness as someone content with simple pleasures? Dworkin said no, emphatically. Your expensive tastes are your responsibility. Cohen wasn't so sure.

Going Global

Most political philosophy, historically, has focused on justice within nation-states. What do citizens of a particular country owe each other? But some luck egalitarians have pushed the theory across borders.

Global luck egalitarians observe that your country of birth is just as arbitrary as your parents' wealth or your natural talents. You didn't choose to be born in Sweden rather than Somalia. You didn't earn your citizenship in a wealthy, stable democracy.

If luck egalitarianism is right that we should compensate people for disadvantages arising from circumstances they didn't choose, and if your birthplace is one such unchosen circumstance, then it seems to follow that rich countries have obligations to people in poor countries. The philosopher Simon Caney has developed this view extensively. Charles Beitz has argued along similar lines.

This is a radical conclusion. It suggests not just that wealthy nations should give foreign aid out of charity or prudence, but that global redistribution is a matter of justice—that people in poor countries have legitimate claims on the resources of wealthy countries, just as poor citizens within a country might have claims on their wealthier compatriots.

The Harsh Objection

Luck egalitarianism has attracted serious critics, and their objections reveal genuine tensions in the theory.

Perhaps the most famous critique came from the philosopher Elizabeth Anderson in a 1999 article provocatively titled "What Is the Point of Equality?" Anderson argued that luck egalitarianism leads to conclusions that are not just wrong but deeply objectionable.

Consider the harshness problem. Luck egalitarianism seems to say that if your misfortune results from your own choices, society owes you nothing. But is that really acceptable?

Take someone who chooses to smoke, knowing the health risks, and develops lung cancer. A strict luck egalitarian might say: you knew the risks, you made the choice, society doesn't owe you healthcare. But most people find this conclusion monstrous. We don't actually want to let people die in the streets because they made imprudent choices.

Or consider someone who chooses to live in an area prone to natural disasters—coastal Florida, earthquake-prone California, or tornado alley. When disaster strikes, does luck egalitarianism really tell us these people have no claim on public assistance? They knew the risks and chose to live there anyway.

The Pity Problem

Anderson raised another objection that cuts even deeper. She argued that luck egalitarianism expresses the wrong attitude toward the disadvantaged.

Think about how luck egalitarianism justifies helping people. It says: these people are worse off through no fault of their own. They're victims of bad luck. They deserve our pity and compensation.

But Anderson found this demeaning. It bases claims to assistance not on equal citizenship or shared humanity but on a kind of inferiority. You get help because you're a victim, because you're pitiable. This isn't a relationship among equals; it's charity condescending toward the unfortunate.

Anderson's alternative, which she called democratic equality, grounds equality in the idea that citizens should relate to one another as equals, none dominating or subordinating others. The point of equality isn't to compensate victims but to create the social conditions for free and equal citizenship.

The Problem of Forced Choices

There's yet another problem with the luck-choice distinction. Many choices aren't really free.

The seventeenth-century philosopher Thomas Hobbes considered a scenario that became famous in philosophy: someone points a gun at you and says "your money or your life." You hand over your wallet. Is this a free choice? You chose to give up your money rather than be killed. But most people would say this coerced choice doesn't make you responsible for your loss in any morally meaningful sense.

Many disadvantaged people face choices something like this. A woman in an abusive relationship "chooses" to stay because the alternative—leaving with no money, no job skills, and children to support—seems worse. A poor person "chooses" to work a dangerous job because it's that or starvation. A refugee "chooses" to risk a perilous sea crossing because staying means death.

Luck egalitarians need some way to distinguish genuine choices from forced choices, options freely taken from options taken under duress. This turns out to be philosophically tricky. Where exactly is the line?

The Intrusive State

Anderson also worried about what luck egalitarianism requires the state to do. If we're going to distinguish deserving victims of bad luck from undeserving authors of their own misfortune, someone has to make that judgment. The state would need to investigate people's life histories, assess their choices, determine whether their poverty or disability or unemployment resulted from bad luck or bad decisions.

This is intrusive and moralistic in ways that seem uncomfortable for a liberal society. Do we really want government bureaucrats deciding whether your current circumstances are your fault?

And the investigations would be endless. Is your gambling addiction a choice you made or a mental health condition you suffer from? Is your obesity the result of irresponsible eating or genetic predisposition or living in a food desert with no access to healthy options? These questions don't have easy answers, but luck egalitarianism seems to require answering them.

The Deeper Question

Behind all these debates lies a deeper philosophical question about free will and responsibility. Luck egalitarianism assumes we can meaningfully distinguish between what happens to us and what we choose. But many philosophers doubt this distinction holds up under scrutiny.

After all, your choices themselves are shaped by factors you didn't choose. Your preferences, values, and decision-making capacities were formed by your genes and your upbringing. If you grew up in an environment that didn't model good decision-making, is your poor decision-making really your fault?

The philosopher Derek Parfit noted that following this line of reasoning seems to lead to the conclusion that no one is ever responsible for anything—that everything is ultimately traceable to factors beyond our control. But if that's true, the luck-choice distinction that luck egalitarianism depends on collapses entirely.

Some luck egalitarians bite this bullet and become what we might call hard determinists, concluding that since no one really chooses anything, everyone's misfortune is bad luck and everyone deserves compensation. Others try to defend a more moderate position that preserves meaningful choice even while acknowledging its limits.

Why It Matters

You might wonder why any of this abstract philosophy matters. But luck egalitarianism, in various forms, has influenced real policy debates.

Consider healthcare. Should people who make unhealthy choices pay more for insurance? Should smokers, heavy drinkers, or people who don't exercise bear higher costs? Luck egalitarian reasoning might say yes—these are choices, so people should bear the consequences. But critics worry this leads to blaming victims and ignoring the social determinants of health.

Consider disability policy. We generally think disabled people deserve support. But why? A luck egalitarian would say: because disability is typically bad brute luck. You didn't choose to be disabled. This reasoning has actually influenced disability rights frameworks, though disability activists have complicated the picture by arguing that disability is often more a matter of social barriers than individual misfortune.

Consider immigration. Global luck egalitarianism suggests that borders are morally arbitrary and that people born in poor countries have claims on wealthy countries' resources. This is a minority position in philosophy, but it offers a distinctive perspective on debates about immigration and foreign aid.

A Theory Still Developing

Luck egalitarianism remains a living, evolving area of philosophy. Thinkers continue to refine the theory, respond to objections, and work out its implications.

Some defenders have argued that luck egalitarianism doesn't have to be as harsh as critics suggest. Perhaps it's compatible with providing a decent minimum for everyone, regardless of whether their poverty results from luck or choice. Perhaps it's better understood as one consideration among many in thinking about justice, rather than the whole story.

Others have tried to rehabilitate the luck-choice distinction by developing more sophisticated accounts of what genuine choice requires. Still others have explored different ways of measuring advantage or specifying what equality demands.

What makes luck egalitarianism enduringly interesting is that it takes seriously an intuition most people share: that it's unfair for someone to suffer because of circumstances beyond their control. Working out exactly what this intuition requires—and confronting the difficulties that arise when we try to act on it—turns out to be surprisingly hard. The debate continues.