Brute Luck Research Articles

Равенство удачи: развитие эгалитарных концепций справедливости в конце XX века

Since the publication of John Rawls’s Theory of Justice, the egalitarian tradition, which associates fair institutional structure with reaching equality in one aspect or another, has started to play a central role in academic discussions of the social justice problem. The article is devoted to the analysis of the evolution of egalitarianism of luck, which by the end of the 20th century has become the main direction in the framework of this tradition. The proponents of this direction in their argument depart from Rawls’s idea about the lottery of birth, according to which a game played by a fortune, being arbitrary from the moral point of view and affecting the distribution of resources in society, is unfair, and therefore should be compensated. Rawls’s approach to minimizing the role of luck in a fair distribution did not guarantee sufficient compensation for natural inequalities, assuming at the same time excessive compensation for “expensive tastes”. Trying to solve this problem, Ronald Dworkin distinguished between brute and option luck, using the model of the “veil of ignorance”, behind which the amount of fair compensation is determined. Further development of egalitarianism of luck at the turn of the 1980—1990s is associated with the names of Richard Arneson, Gerald Cohen, John Roemer and some other authors who made a number of amendments and changes to the concept of undeserved luck and proposed their own ways to neutralize its consequences for society. The arguments of proponents of luck egalitarianism at the end of the 20th century aimed at strengthening the role of an individual’s freedom of choice and implantation of the ethics of responsibility into the theory of social justice. At the same time, the interpretation of luck as a true “currency of equality” made the question of fair distribution conditional upon the consensus on the limits of human capacity for systematic cultivation of virtues and the scope of individual responsibility for one’s own destiny.

Левое либертарианство и генетическая справедливость

Distributive justice is one of the central questions of contemporary moral and political phi­losophy. Discussions on this topic are often presented as a confrontation between two groups of thinkers: libertarians and luck egalitarians. The former emphasize the dependence of the existing distribution on the individual choice and personal responsibility of people, and therefore are skeptical about various redistribution programs. The latter, on the contrary, emphasize the influence of morally arbitrary luck on the economic situation of people, and therefore welcome redistributive measures to compensate for this brute luck. Left-libertarian claims to reconcile these two types of moral considerations. The classical left-libertarian point of view seeks to offset the influence of brute luck through an egalitarian distribution of the benefits of owning natural resources that are independent of anyone’s choice and respon­sibility. However, this position does not sufficiently take into account the influence of other factors of brute luck and, in particular, genetic endowments on the distribution of economic wealth. This article discusses three approaches that allow left-libertarians to take into ac­count the factor of genetic luck in interpersonal distribution. First, it is Hillel Steiner’s pro­posal to attribute genetic information to natural resources, the benefits of which are subject to egalitarian redistribution. Second, it is the concept of equal opportunity for welfare by Pe­ter Vallentyne, Michael Otsuka and Eric Roark. Thirdly, it is the universal dominance crite­rion of Philippe Van Parijs and Kasper Ossenblok. The first two approaches face a number of moral and practical difficulties, but the third approach is able to overcome them. Thus, the universal dominance criterion is the most promising way to reconcile left-libertarianism and justice in the distribution of genetic endowments.

Do differences in brute luck influence preferences for redistribution in favour of the environment and health?

Redistributive justice is based on the premise that it is unfair for people to be better or worse off relative to others simply because of their fortune or misfortune. It assumes equal opportunities arising from four factors: social circumstances, effort, option luck and brute luck. This paper seeks to investigate how differences in perceived brute luck influence individual preferences for redistribution in favour of two public policies: “health intervention” and “environmental actions”. These policies are viewed somewhat differently: the environment is considered a pure “public good” and health, more as a “private good” with a strong public good element. Consequently, potential self-serving biases inherent in the preferences for redistributive policies are expected to differ, more likely favouring health than the environment. The perceived degree of brute luck may capture such a difference—those perceiving themselves as luckiest should be less amenable to redistribution in favour of health than the unluckiest. Data from the three waves (2000, 2006 and 2008) of a French population survey are used to examine this self-serving bias. A Generalised Ordered Logit (GOL) model is found to be statistically more relevant compared to other logistic regression models (multinomial and ordered). We find that a perceived low degree of brute luck is significantly associated with a decreased preference of redistributive environmental policies but the reverse is true for redistributive health policies, i.e., association with an increased preference. Assuming that all inequalities due to differing luck are unjust, this empirical validation gives redistributive justice grounds for equalisation policies regarding health.

Choice and Personal Responsibility: What Is a Morally Relevant Choice?

Abstract The principle that people should be held personally responsible for the consequences of their choices is a fundamental moral ideal in Western societies. We report from a large-scale experimental study of how far-reaching this principle is for inequality acceptance. We show that third-party spectators violate minimal conditions for a morally relevant choice when making redistributive decisions for two workers. They accept more inequality when the workers have made nominal and forced choices than when brute luck is the source of inequality. We argue that our findings shed light on important current political debates about personal responsibility and redistributive policies.

The temptation of luck: The Machiavellian prince and the Hobbesian sovereign facing moral and honour-motivated responsibilities

In political philosophy, brute or circumstantial luck entails responsibilities. Even so, leaders may be tempted to capitalize on lucky endowments or circumstances that turn in their favour without giving too much attention to moral responsibility. This is because besides moral responsibility, there is another kind of responsibility that flows out of luck. Machiavelli and Hobbes provide the classic philosophical accounts of honour-based responsibility and universal moral responsibility. While this distinction is only suggested by Machiavelli, Hobbes explicitly develops an account of the laws of honour and the laws of nature that make the essential difference between a political community and a community where the state of war becomes less visible, although still ongoing.

Rethinking Compensation for Bad Luck

Luck egalitarianism (LE, henceforth) is a fairly prominent theory of justice. While there are many versions of LE, they all agree that, at least to some extent, it is unjust for individuals to lose the opportunity for welfare at least when that loss occurs through no fault of the individual’s own. Many writers take LE to have direct political implications; they write as if the truth of LE entails that resources should be taken from some – perhaps those who enjoy lots of unearned welfare – and delivered to those who suffer through no fault of their own. I argue that luck egalitarians should refocus their thinking on what I call a “Systemic Model” of compensation. This model holds that (a) what matters most to offsetting bad brute luck is that individuals have opportunities to make up for losses of welfare and (b) political systems should be designed to prevent some individuals from capturing resources in a manner that frustrates the ability of others to offset their own losses due to unearned bad luck and (c) political systems should aim to maximize the opportunities individuals have to make up for their own bad luck.

Luck Egalitarianism and Disability Elimination

AbstractLuck egalitarianism’s commitment to neutralizing brute luck inequalities is thought to imply that the elimination of disabilities is an appropriate way to eliminate the unchosen disadvantage that often accompanies disabilities. This implication is not only intuitively objectionable to some, especially those concerned with disability justice, but is subject to objections from relational egalitarians that should be taken seriously. This article defends the claim that disability elimination is not a natural implication of luck egalitarian theories of justice and that luck egalitarians can avoid the related relational egalitarian objections. I take this to be the case because luck egalitarians can consistently endorse three commitments that, together, take disability elimination off the menu of possible ways to redress the disadvantage of persons with disabilities. These three commitments are: (a) the rejection of the view that disability intrinsically makes a person worse off; (b) the endorsement of the fundamental equality of all persons; and (c) the view that luck egalitarianism advances a theory about the arrangement of social institutions.

Luck Egalitarianism: Two Lines of Critique

This article is devoted to the stream in political philosophy which came to be known as “luck egalitarianism”. Luck egalitarians are concerned with the questions of distributive justice; their main idea is that no person should be worse-off due to factors which they are unable to influence. Luck egalitarians express this idea via the dichotomy of brute and option luck. The goal of the article is to describe two main lines of critique which luck egalitarianism encounters, and to assess which one is the most dangerous for this movement. Some authors criticize luck egalitarianism from a moral standpoint. They believe that it is overly cruel towards those who suffer due to unfortunate but free choices, humiliating towards those whom it deems to be worthy of help, and that it contradicts our moral intuitions concerning the question of what do people who engage in socially necessary, yet risky professions, deserve. Another important problem for this trend of political thought has to do with metaphysical criticism. Luck egalitarians claim that a person is not responsible not only for the status of her family, her gender, ethnicity, etc., but also for her talents and abilities. The question arises; is there anything for what a person can be genuinely responsible for? Thus, luck egalitarianism encounters the problem of determinism and free will. This problem threatens the identity of luck egalitarianism: if free will does not exist or if it cannot be identified, then the key dichotomy of brute and option luck is meaningless. The article demonstrates that it is the criticism of the second kind which currently poses the greatest problem for luck egalitarianism.

Exploitation: Bridging Social and Distributive Egalitarianism

Social egalitarians have charged distributive egalitarianism with abandoning the victims of option luck, disrespecting victims of brute luck and misunderstanding the aim of egalitarian justice. Social egalitarians have tended to favour a conception of equality that is concerned with ending oppression and expressing equal respect for everyone. In this article, I argue that what has so far been missing from this debate is the fundamental connection that exists between distributive egalitarianism and a conception of exploitation. Once this connection is understood, we can see that social egalitarians are unfair in their criticisms. Importantly, the connection to exploitation reveals that social egalitarianism and distributive egalitarianism are not rival positions. When it comes to exploitation, the two positions are able to coordinate and identify two core wrong-making features that form part of an exploitative interaction.

What’s Wrong with Equality of Opportunity

How do we know if people are equal? Contemporary philosophers consider a number of issues when determining if the goals of egalitarian distributive justice have been achieved: defining the metric of equality; determining whether the goal is equality, or simply priority or sufficiency; establishing whether there should be conditions, e.g. bad brute luck, for the amelioration of inequality. In all this, most egalitarians contend that what is to be equalized is not people’s actual shares of the good in question, but rather, the opportunities to have such shares. I counter this view with an ‘egalitarian flourishing’ approach that, in seeking to make people equal in actual well-being, takes exception to the role of opportunity in contemporary argument. The flourishing view means a focus on outcomes, on how people live, in order to enable people to live equally flourishing lives. I argue that if we consider the complex dynamics of choice and circumstance, the role of nonmaterial considerations and the ideal of an egalitarian community, equality of opportunity proves to be an inadequate approach to the realization of the egalitarian ideal.

BASIC INCOME AND THE RIGHTS OF PERSONS WITH DISABILITIES

The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities presents a social approach to disabilities. In accordance with this conception, the origin of the discrimination suffered by persons with disabilities is mainly social because we have designed our society without universal access for everybody. There is a normality criterion, based on physical capabilities, intelligence, race and gender that excludes many people from that canon. The different contemporary liberal theories of justice have discussed disabilities thinking about how the State could compensate brute luck. In this context, does universal basic income play some role? Van Parijs in Real Freedom for All defends a unanimous criterion to compensate for brute luck. That compensation would be made before distributing an equal basic income among everybody. In this paper, UBI will be studied in the context of the debate about rights of persons with disabilities. Firstly, the argument given by Van Parijs will be discussed because the unanimous requirement does not fit with a social understanding of disabilities. Secondly, if we consider a right to UBI, it is necessary to study which role this right can play in the life of people with disabilities and if we can say that this right has a universal design. In this point, it will be studied whether UBI can establish some type of indirect discrimination against people with disabilities and if so, which type of reasonable accommodation would be necessary to eliminate that discrimination.

What Is Unfair about Unequal Brute Luck? An Intergenerational Puzzle

According to Luck egalitarians, fairness requires us to bring it about that nobody is worse off than others where this results from brute bad luck, but not where they choose or deserve to be so. In this paper, I consider one type of brute bad luck that appears paradigmatic of what a Luck Egalitarian ought to be most concerned about, namely that suffered by people who are born to badly off parents and are less well off as a result. However, when we consider what is supposedly unfair about this kind of unequal brute luck, luck egalitarians face a dilemma. According to the standard account of luck egalitarianism, differential brute luck is unfair because of its effects on the distribution of goods. Yet, where some parents are worse off because they have chosen to be imprudent, it may be impossible to neutralize these effects without creating a distribution that seems at least as unfair. This, I argue, is problematic for luck egalitarianism. I, therefore, explore two alternative views that can avoid this problem. On the first of these, proposed by Shlomi Segall, the distributional effects of unequal brute luck are unfair only when they make a situation more unequal, but not when they make it more equal. On the second, it is the unequal brute luck itself, rather than its distributional effects, that is unfair. I conclude with some considerations in favour of this second view, while accepting that both are valid responses to the problem I describe.

A Philosophical Theory of Fairness for Prediction-Based Decisions

This paper presents a fairness principle that can be used to evaluate decision-making based on predictions. We propose that a decision rule for decision-making based on predictions is fair when the individuals directly subjected to the implications of the decision enjoy fair equality of chances. We define fair equality of chances as obtaining if and only if the individuals who are equal with respect to the features that justify inequalities in outcomes have the same statistical prospects of being benefited or harmed, irrespective of their morally irrelevant traits. The paper characterizes – in a formal way – the way in which luck is allowed to impact outcome in order for its influence to be fair. This fairness principle can be used to evaluate decision-making based on predictions, a kind of decision-making that is becoming increasingly important to theorize around in light of the growing prevalence of algorithmic decision-making in healthcare, the criminal justice system and the insurance industry, among other areas. It can be used to evaluate decision-making rules based on different normative theories, and is compatible with the broadest range of normative views according to which inequalities due to brute luck can be fair.

Why Health-Related Inequalities Matter and which Ones Do

I outline and defend two egalitarian theories, which yield distinctive and, I argue, complementary answers to why health-related inequalities matter: a brute luck egalitarian view, according to which inequalities due to unchosen, differential luck are bad because unfair, and a social egalitarian view, according to which inequalities are bad when and because they undermine people’s status as equal citizens. These views identify different objects of egalitarian concern: the brute luck egalitarian view directs attention to healthrelated well-being, while social egalitarianism focuses on health-related capabilities that are central to a person’s status as a citizen. I argue that both views are correct and should jointly guide priority-setting in health.

Igualitarismo de la suerte. Análisis de la responsabilidad como criterio de distribución de recursos en la salud

En este trabajo me aproximo desde la perspectiva del igualitarismo de la suerte al problema de la justicia distributiva en el campo de la salud. Para ello, me basaré en algunos de los postulados de Ronald Dworkin y Shlomi Segall sobre los que descansa el origen del igualitarismo de la suerte. Si bien es cierto que Rawls al proponer el principio de la equitativa igualdad de oportunidades intentó mitigar las desigualdades sociales que son consecuencia del azar para algunos filósofos igualitaristas, como Ronald Dworkin, al no considerar el binomio libertadresponsabilidad el argumeto rawlsiano resultaba poco equitativo y decidieron desarrollar otra rama del igualitarismo que permitiera distinguir a la persona de sus circunstancias. Por ello la consideración de la responsabilidad como criterio de distribución para los recursos sanitarios será puesta a prueba y analizada en tres puntos. En primer lugar, expondré los aspectos generales del igualitarismo de la suerte y definiré la postura de Daniels y Segall respecto a la asistencia sanitaria. En segundo lugar, retomaré la distinción que hace Dworkin entre “suerte bruta” y “suerte opcional” y expondré su propuesta sobre la igualdad de recursos así como su modelo sanitario sustentado en el binomio libertad-responsabilidad. En tercer lugar, analizaré la relación entre libertad y responsabilidad en el cuidado de la salud. De este modo, pretendo demostrar las ventajas y desventajas que se pueden seguir de tomar la responsabilidad individual como criterio de distribución de recursos.

CATERING FOR RESPONSIBILITY: BRUTE LUCK, OPTION LUCK, AND THE NEUTRALITY OBJECTION TO LUCK EGALITARIANISM

Abstract:The distinction between brute luck and option luck is fundamental for luck egalitarianism. Many luck egalitarians write as if it could be used to specify which outcomes people should be held responsible for. In this paper, I argue that the distinction can’t be used this way. In fact, luck egalitarians tend to rely instead on rough intuitive judgements about individual responsibility. This makes their view vulnerable to what’s known as theneutrality objection. I show that attempts to avoid this objection are unsuccessful. I conclude that until it provides a better account of attributing responsibility, luck egalitarianism remains incomplete.

What's a Government Good for? Fiscal Policy in an Age of Inequality

The debate surrounding the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act demonstrated the intellectual bankruptcy of U.S. fiscal policy debate. The TCJA has serious flaws as a matter of narrow tax policy, but it is more fundamentally flawed when viewed through the proper policy lens, which is overall fiscal policy – the net of government taxing and spending. The TCJA greatly exacerbates already untenable budget deficits. Its tax prescriptions are even more regressive when the spending cuts contemplated by the legislation itself are reflected. And the law’s regressivity is compounded further when plausible financing paths for these large deficits are included in the analysis. In particular, the “dynamic” growth analysis whose tax ramifications were part of the debate leading up to the law was predicated on enormous cuts to future transfer payments, and confused GDP growth with enhanced welfare. This presentation urges a more holistic approach to fiscal policy debates. Fiscal policy is an exercise in applied economics, but also in applied moral philosophy. We define ourselves as a country through the covenantal bonds we construct for our society by means of the fiscal policies we adopt. Neither perspective is well served by the metrics applied today to legislation like the TCJA. Tax policy is overstudied and overemphasized; sensible fiscal policy, by contrast, in particular the spending side of the equation, can address fundamental social problems like economic inequality, the stagnant incomes of the middle class, and disappointing economic mobility. Greater government investment in human capital leads to inclusive growth (more broadly shared growth) and faster growth than does the path that the United States now is following. Inclusive growth mediated by government investment thus yields a double dividend. A greater role for government insurance is economically efficient, by resolving the pervasive problem of adverse selection in private insurance markets and the impossibility of private markets insuring more existential fortuities. Government insurance also responds to the moral imperatives that animate the covenantal bonds through which we define our society. In the end, brute luck has more to do with the outcomes of our lives than most like to admit; well-designed insurance modulates the worst of these fortuities. The Market Triumphalist view that dominates much current debate rests on the denial of luck; what is required instead is the humility that comes with acknowledging the role of fortune, and with it a commitment to a more empathetic economy.

눈먼 운의 축차 재분배와 비례 재분배: 모의실험적 접근

눈먼 운의 축차 재분배와 비례 재분배: 모의실험적 접근

Fair or Unfair Algorithmic Differentiation? Luck Egalitarianism As a Lens for Evaluating Algorithmic Decision-Making.

Differentiation is often intrinsic to the functioning of algorithms. Within large data sets, ‘differentiating grounds’, such as correlations or patterns, are found, which in turn, can be applied by decision-makers to distinguish between individuals or groups of individuals. As the use of algorithms becomes more wide-spread, the chance that algorithmic forms of differentiation result in unfair outcomes increases. Intuitively, certain (random) algorithmic, classification acts, and the decisions that are based on them, seem to run counter to the fundamental notion of equality. It nevertheless remains difficult to articulate why exactly we find certain forms of algorithmic differentiation fair or unfair, vis-a-vis the general principle of equality. Concentrating on Dworkin’s notions brute and option luck, this discussion paper presents a luck egalitarian perspective as a potential approach for making this evaluation possible. The paper then considers whether this perspective can also inform us with regard to the interpretation of EU data protection legislation, and the General Data Protection Regulation in particular. Considering data protection’s direct focus on the data processes underlying algorithms, the GDPR might, when informed by egalitarian notions, form a more practically feasible way of governing algorithmic inequalities.

Popular acceptance of inequality due to innate brute luck and support for classical benefit-based taxation

U.S. survey respondents' views on distributive justice differ in two specific, related ways from what is conventionally assumed in modern optimal tax research. When expressing their preferences over allocations in stylized, hypothetical scenarios meant to isolate key features of the tax problem, a large share of respondents resist the full equalization of unequal outcomes due to innate brute luck that standard analyses recommend. A similar share prefer a classical benefit-based logic for taxes over the conventional logic of diminishing marginal social welfare. Moreover, these two views are linked: respondents who more strongly resist equalization are more likely to prefer the classical benefit-based principle. Though the Amazon Mechanical Turk survey population is not a representative sample of the U.S. population, robustness of these results across demographic traits and political views suggests that a large share of the American public holds views inconsistent with standard welfarist objectives.