Article

Philosophy and Social Criticism

2022, Vol. 48(1) 1 4­–39
Good life egalitarianism ª The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/0191453720931904
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Tom Malleson
King’s University College at Western University, Canada

Abstract
This article carves out a new path between the two dominant wings of contemporary egalitar-
ianism. The luck egalitarian emphasis on choice and personal responsibility is misplaced because
individuals differ so deeply, and arbitrarily, in their choice-making capacities. Allowing inequalities
to result from ‘choice’ is akin to allowing inequalities to stem from the possession of any other
morally arbitrary factor – such as skin colour or gender. The move towards relational egalitar-
ianism has been a case of two-steps forward, one-step back. While the shift away from the focus on
choice is salutary, the concurrent rejection of luck is problematic, given the prevalence and
importance of luck-based discrepancies in opportunities to lead a good life. A new conceptual
framework is presented: good life egalitarianism. The guiding idea is that given the unavoidable
arbitrariness of human capacities, the foundation for a good life should be assured for people
regardless of the actual choices that they make. The essential goods necessary for leading a good
life – such as the opportunities to self-determine and to enjoy non-dominating social relationships
– should be guaranteed to all.

Keywords
desert, egalitarianism, luck egalitarianism, relational egalitarianism, responsibility

Egalitarianism is, arguably, the central value of the left. But what exactly does it mean?
For many years it was understood as the aspiration that people’s circumstances, partic-
ularly their material circumstances, should be similar. In political philosophy, an impor-
tant shift occurred when Ronald Dworkin (1981a, 1981b) argued that while inequalities
in brute luck should be rectified, those which resulted from personal choice were legit-
imate. This key distinction between luck and choice has since formed the heart of what
came to be known as luck egalitarianism (Arneson 1989; Cohen 1989; Roemer 1993). By
the end of the century, however, a number of egalitarian thinkers began launching
spirited attacks against luck egalitarianism, arguing that the soul of equality was not

Corresponding author:
Tom Malleson, Social Justice & Peace Studies, King’s University College at Western University, 266 Epworth
Avenue, London, ON N6A 2M3, Canada.
Email: [email protected]
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extinguishing bad luck, but establishing non-dominating, non-disrespectful human rela-

tionships. This body of work has come to be known as relational egalitarianism (Ander-
son 1999; Fourie, Schuppert, and Wallimann-Helmer 2015; Scheffler 2003, 2005;
Schemmel 2011).
In this article, I seek to make the case that neither of these theories will do. I argue
that, on the one hand, egalitarianism took a wrong turn by focusing so much on choice
and responsibility. This has, predictably, brought in its train an ineliminable aspect of
conservativism, indeed anti-egalitarianism, into the heart of egalitarian thought. We
should in fact eschew the focus on choice, and so abandon that half of luck egalitarian-
ism, while retaining the useful focus on the other half: the arbitrariness the arbitrariness
of luck-based circumstances which shape our lives. On the other hand, while relational
egalitarianism constitutes an important advance in turning away from the focus on
choice, it also moves away from paying attention to the role of luck in our lives – and
that is a profound mistake. What we need, then, is a new conception that, as much as
possible, retains the strengths of each theory while avoiding the problematic parts. I
argue that this can best be accomplished through a new way of framing egalitarianism,
which I call good life egalitarianism (GLE). The heart of GLE is the belief that given the
unavoidable arbitrariness of human capacities – including even such foundational capa-
cities as effort, reason, and choice-making, which themselves are ineliminably shaped by
luck – what one obtains in life should be largely insensitive to the actual choices that one
makes. Rather, egalitarianism should be about aiming to guarantee to all a robust, and
roughly equal distribution of the essential goods necessary to live a good life. The aim is
thus to minimize the importance of choice in the distribution of social goods and bads.
Although some amount of reward and punishment for personal choices is unavoidably
necessary in social life to incentivize appropriate behaviour for overall well-being, the
scale of those differential rewards and punishments should be dramatically compressed.
The ultimate vision is thus of a much more equal society, raising up the bottom with a
robust social minimum, much more generous than the conventional welfare safety net,
that is guaranteed to all regardless of choice, and paid for through high redistributive
taxes which lower the top; and where the remaining inequalities that do exist between
people on the basis of their personal choices are significantly constrained.
I proceed as follows. The first section examines luck egalitarianism and argues that
we should move away from a focus on choice and responsibility (or deservingness). This
is the core of the article. The second section briefly examines relational egalitarianism,
arguing that it errs in ignoring luck-based inequalities that are important even though
they are non-relational. The third and final section seeks to integrate the strengths and
avoid the weaknesses of both prior theories by offering a new conception of equality,
GLE.

1. Luck egalitarianism
Luck egalitarianism is now a large body of work (Arneson 1989; Cohen 1989; Dworkin
1981a, 1981b; Knight 2009; Lippert-Rasmussen 2015; Roemer 1993; Tan 2011). Despite
its breadth, I think we can safely identify its core as the belief that equality requires us to
rectify differences that are due to bad brute luck, while permitting differences that result
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from the outcome of free choice. In Dworkin’s (1981a, 1981b) initial formulation, the
distribution of resources should be ambition-sensitive, but endowment insensitive. In
Cohen’s well-known words, ‘I believe that the primary egalitarian impulse is to extin-
guish the influence on distribution of . . . brute luck (things one didn’t choose)’ (1989,
908). Indeed, what we conventionally call ‘luck egalitarianism’ should more appropri-
ately be labelled ‘luck-vs-choice egalitarianism’, because the doctrine is constituted by
this critical distinction. So, for example, Eric Rakowski argues that

undeserved, unwagered, unchosen inequalities warrant redress . . . [Whereas] people who

leap from airplanes, scale cliffs, or whirl around racetracks knowingly take their lives in
their own hands and cannot expect others to foot their hospital bills or aid their dependents if
fortune is uncharitable (1991, 76, 79).

(The reader should take note that the emphasis on personal responsibility is naturally
accompanied with an implicit moralistic finger-wagging: ‘You made bad choices. It’s
your own fault. We’re not going to look after you; you got yourself into this mess and so
you have no one to blame but yourself’.) As Samuel Scheffler (2005) noted long ago,
what is so interesting – and I will argue so problematic – about this is that in incorporat-
ing an emphasis on choice and responsibility into egalitarianism, luck egalitarians have
brought into egalitarian thought a central pillar of conservativism. In Cohen’s words,
‘Dworkin has [through his choice/luck distinction], in effect, performed for egalitarian-
ism the considerable service of incorporating within it the most powerful idea in the
arsenal of the anti-egalitarian right: the idea of choice and responsibility’ (1989, 933).
Whether this really is a ‘service’ is the issue I dispute here.
Before critiquing luck egalitarianism, it is important to be clear about its strengths.
What is, in my view, correct and deeply valuable about luck egalitarianism is the intui-
tion that one should not be disadvantaged compared to others due to factors that are
outside of one’s control. In Larry Temkin’s powerful formulation, ‘it is bad – unjust and
unfair – for some to be worse off than others through no fault of their own’ (quoted in
Richard Arneson 2007, 263). Some people have blonde hair while some have brown,
some are born with skin that is characterized as ‘white’ and others ‘black,’ some are born
with attributes that are assigned male, others female, or intersex, some develop severe
physiological impairments which others do not, some are born into rich families and
countries, while most others are not. What is surely correct about the luck egalitarian
view, and what should remain a central pillar of egalitarian thought, is that such factors
are ‘arbitrary from a moral point of view,’1 and so must not lead to significant advantages
or disadvantages in people’s lives. Since all human beings are of equal moral worth and
dignity, it is just flat out wrong for some to suffer worse lives than others for no good
reason (presuming, of course, that such inequalities are actually rectifiable). Indeed,
allowing some to live worse lives than others for arbitrary reasons is one very precise
and very common mechanism for treating them as beings of lesser worth and dignity. If
this train of thought is correct, as I believe it is, then the applicability of luck egalitar-
ianism is vast, since much of human history as well as contemporary social life is about
the institutionalization of forms of privilege, oppression and domination on the basis of
arbitrary characteristics of gender, race, class, geography, ability and so on. (I hasten to
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add that just because luck egalitarianism is capable of conceptualizing these inequalities,
it does not follow that it is the only or best approach for doing so.)
So while luck egalitarianism is right to draw our attention to the moral arbitrariness of
many social outcomes, where it goes wrong is in legitimating the inequalities that arise
from choice. The view that unequal outcomes are legitimate when they arise from
individual choice is of course very common. Indeed, the emphasis on personal choice
and deservingness has long been central to conservative and neoliberal thought. Since
the 1980s, the neoliberal worldview has become increasingly prevalent, whereby what
one ends up with in life is seen as the result of one’s personal choices. If one works hard
and succeeds then one’s riches are well deserved, whereas if one ends up poor, or in jail,
one has only oneself to blame. Hence when Republicans passed ‘three-strikes laws’, and
Clinton slashed welfare to the poor, the primary justification was that of personal
responsibility (indeed, Clinton’s welfare reform bill was called the ‘Personal Reason-
ability and Work Opportunity Act’). Likewise, Republican intellectuals, like Greg Man-
kiw (2013), routinely defend inequality on the grounds that multimillionaires morally
deserve their income.2 Consider a few typical quotations from prominent conservatives.
Kathy Miller (a campaign manager for the Republican Party in Ohio) states that ‘If
you’re black and you haven’t been successful in the last fifty years, it’s your own fault’
(Lewis and Silverstone 2016); Presidential candidate Herman Cain tells people: ‘Don’t
blame Wall Street. Don’t blame the big banks. If you don’t have a job and you’re not
rich, blame yourself’ (Martinez 2016, 18); Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin claims
that ‘acts of monstrous criminality stand on their own. They begin and end with the
criminals who commit them’ (Taslitz 2011, 104); likewise British Prime Minister John
Major called for harsher criminal punishments, especially against youth, on the grounds
that ‘society needs to condemn a little more and understand a little less’ (Waller 2011,
283). Now most luck egalitarians would no doubt reject such extreme positions. Nev-
ertheless, the uncomfortable fact that luck egalitarians must face up to is that in embra-
cing the principle of choice and personal responsibility, they find themselves claiming
allegiance to the same basic principle (if not the rhetoric or radicalism) which animates
their conservative rivals.3
When luck egalitarians claim that inequalities resulting from choice are legitimate,
what exactly do they mean? Although the argument is rarely spelt out, the intuition is
clear enough: Competent adults are in control of their choices, so the choices they make
are their own ‘responsibility’. What exactly does that mean? Responsibility is of course a
notoriously complex subject. We can sidestep the deep debates about moral responsi-
bility and free will by understanding the luck egalitarian position in straightforward
desertist terms: To say that competent adults bear responsibility for their choices simply
means that they rightly deserve praise or blame, reward or punishment, for the choices
they make. Some people choose to work hard, whereas others choose to surf all day.
Insofar as the resultant differences in income are the result of such personal choices, they
are ethically deserved.
What is required for individuals to be deserving of (or responsible for) the outcomes
of their choices?4 For someone to deserve something morally (as opposed to simply
being institutionally ‘entitled’ to it), the crucial requirement is that the desert basis must
be under the individual’s control. This is the control principle, which Arneson formulates
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as the principle that ‘one should not be held responsible for what lies beyond one’s power
to control’ (2007, 269).5 The rationale for the control principle is that it is unjust and
unfair for people to get rewards or punishments for things that they are outside of one’s
control. For example, we commonly recognize that it is unacceptable to base income on
the possession of blue eyes or blond hair or familial bloodline because these are outside
of one’s control and so morally arbitrary.6
With this background, we can now state the central argument, which is that we should
be sceptical of the extent to which inequalities based on choice are legitimate. This is
because our abilities to make ‘good choices’ (to study diligently, work hard, reason well,
avoid conflict, engage in healthy activities, or whatever the case may be) are due to a
range of social and historical factors largely outside our control – due, in other words, to
luck. The evidence that people have markedly different choice-making capacities, and
arbitrarily so, is growing every day. Indeed, part of my broader claim here is that having
better awareness of the relevant psychological and sociological literatures importantly
enhances our philosophical understandings. Let us consider a small handful of the
psychological factors which impact all of our abilities to make so-called good choices
and engage in good actions.

Implicit bias. This refers to the myriad ways in which all of us subconsciously
stereotype others, and ourselves, particularly based on culturally significant
hierarchies of race and gender (Nosek et al. 2007). In one famous and heart-
breaking study, both White and Black children preferred playing with white
dolls to black dolls. Even Black children thought black dolls were uglier than
white ones (Kenneth and Clark 1947). Similar results continue to be found today
(Banks, Eberhardt, and Ross 2006). None of us chooses, of course, to have the
implicit biases that we do; that is the point, such biases impact our choices and
actions even though we are unaware of them.
Level of day-to-day self-confidence or what psychologists call ‘self-efficacy’ (i.e.
the confidence that one has the knowledge and ability to make decisions and
complete tasks effectively (Bandura 1997)).7 Related to this is one’s levels of
enthusiasm, optimism and cheerfulness. Some people start new work tasks with
gumption and excitement, ‘This is going to be great!’ ‘I’m going to do amaz-
ingly’. Whereas some people have very low self-confidence (and high levels of
self-doubt, pessimism and depression). They face the same work tasks with very
different dispositions: ‘I hate this’, ‘I know I’m going to screw it up’, ‘my life
sucks’. At its extreme, some individuals develop ‘learned helplessness’, where
they come to believe that they are entirely powerless to change things (Miller
and Seligman 1975). It is clear that having different personality dispositions
along such lines can have massive impacts on one’s work choices and are likely
to significantly facilitate (or impede) one’s successes.8
Effortability. The amount of effort that individuals have at their disposal is due in
part to the extent of one’s fitness and bodily energy, and in part due to one’s
psychological proclivities and pain tolerances (does the activity in question feel
enjoyable or excruciating?) (Malleson, 2019). Whether one is capable of
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working two hours per day or twelve will of course massively impact not only
one’s choices but one’s ability to bring such choices to fruition.9
Intellectual abilities. Some people have highly elevated cognitive and analytical
abilities, whereas others do not. Some have high levels of deliberative ease and
enjoyment – they find the weighing of arguments, the analysis of evidence, the
examination of costs and benefits, and so forth, to be an enjoyable and easy
activity, while some experience it as stressful and discomforting (Cacioppo et al.
1996). Some people have significant capacity for higher-order reflectiveness
(Frankfurt 1971), including abilities for long-term planning, while others don’t.
Some have significant abilities to concentrate on a task with diligent ‘stick-with-
it-ness’, while others find themselves easily bored or distracted. Likewise, many
people have varying levels of cognitive impairments (such as learning difficul-
ties or attention deficits) or behaviour disorders (such as being on the autism
spectrum). Such differences will significantly shape people’s ability to reflect,
deliberate and come to good final decisions.
Emotional abilities. People also have marked differences in their degree of self-
control (Moffitt et al. 2011). This too will substantially impact one’s choice-
making abilities. In particular, it is well known that the ability to self-regulate
emotions, particularly anger, is highly correlated with crime (and with all the
highly detrimental social consequences that go along with that) (Roberton,
Daffern, and Bucks 2014). Additionally, people’s choice-making capacities are
powerfully influenced by one’s level of internal stress and anxiety, as well as the
ability to empathize and feel compassion (some are so empathetic that they feel
driven to devote their lives to the reduction of others’ suffering (MacFarquhar
2015), whereas at the other extreme, sociopaths are completely unaffected by
others’ emotional well-being).
Situational factors also play a deep role in people’s choices. For instance, it is well-
established that even minor situational changes can significantly impact peo-
ple’s thinking and acting (Dorris 2002). To take just one example, Isen and
Levin (1972) found that the mere act of finding a dime later led people to be
more generous in helping to pick up dropped papers. Relatedly, there is signif-
icant evidence that simply coming to occupy a new social role can deeply
impact one’s choices and behaviours. The classic examples here are those of
Milgram’s (1963) electric shock experiments whereby individuals were willing
to induce extreme pain on others simply because they were told to do so by an
authority figure, as well as the Stanford prison experiments, whereby students
temporarily assigned roles of prisoners or guards quickly adopted intense (and
disturbing) attributes of those roles (Zimbardo 2007).
One’s choices and actions are also profoundly impacted by changes in one’s brain
biochemistry. A fascinating example is the case of the happily married man who
started developing pedophilic desires, eventually turning his life upside down,
ending in arrest. It turns out that the man had a brain tumour. When the tumour
was removed, the pedophilic desires disappeared; and when the tumour
returned, so did the pedophilic desires (Martinez 2016).
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Thus we see that at as science and social science advance our understanding of human
behaviour, the realm of ‘free choice’ shrinks ever smaller. What we used to see as a simple,
straightforward ‘choice’ of a student to submit their papers late, we now recognize the role
of ADHD; what we used to see as the ‘choice’ of individuals to become addicted to drugs,
we now better understand the salience of past trauma; what we used to see as the ‘choice’
of a person to become suddenly enraged, we are now better attuned to the ways in which
repeated damaging relationships with early attachment figures can become neurologically
encoded and then subconsciously activated in stressful situations later in life.
The second thing to notice about this list is that these factors are not binary things –
they are spectra. All of us fall somewhere on the normal distribution curves for them all;
for all of us, it is not a case of yes or no, but more or less. The most crucial point is that,
due to luck (genetic, familial and/or circumstantial), human beings have very unequal
amounts of mental resources. And so to reward individuals for making good choices is to
reward them for arbitrarily possessing particular mental resources – and that is morally
equivalent to rewarding people for possessing white skin. It is wrong to base rewards or
punishments on luck, since doing so is arbitrary, unfair, and fails to treat people with
equal moral worth and dignity. Of course, rewarding people for the lucky possession of
mental faculties is not exactly the same as rewarding people for skin colour, since there
may well be instrumental and pragmatic reasons for why society would want to reward,
say, effort or productivity, in ways that do not apply in the case of skin colour. Never-
theless, the point remains that from a non-instrumental, purely moral point of view,
distributing significant resources, opportunities, or life prospects on the basis of luck
– whether of skin tone or mental faculties – is equally egregious.
For example, Sam grew up in a loving, stable, family, where he was exposed to books,
ideas, conversation, debate; he was loved and nurtured through secure attachments; he
attended schools where teachers fostered his confidence, taught him how to diligently
complete tasks and praised him for doing so. He thus entered adulthood as an enthusi-
astic and optimistic young man, with significant self-efficacy, a developed internal locus
of control, strong curiosity, diligence and cognitive fortitude. He has no trouble obeying
the law or de-escalating conflicts, and eventually becomes a successful, rich lawyer. On
the other side of town, Farah grows up in a household that is just as materially well-off,
but significantly worse off in terms of emotional and psychological support. Her single
mother is frequently absent, short-tempered and emotionally detached. As a child she
experienced profound trauma of sexual abuse from an uncle. She attended a school,
where her teachers ignored her, belittled her race and assumed she was stupid due to a
learning disability. She entered adulthood pessimistic, with periods of severe, debilitat-
ing depression, with little self-efficacy, significant learned helplessness, possessing a
short-attention span, gripped by uncontrollable bursts of anger, difficulty in concentrat-
ing on a task, finds internal deliberation difficult and uncomfortable, feels constant
anxiety and fear, and suffers from chronic back pain. She frequently finds herself in
conflict, occasionally leading to fights and arrests. She finds it hard to hold down a job.
As a young adult, she finds herself poor, pregnant and living on welfare.
Both Sam and Farah are competent adults with agency. Both have the basic ability to
reflect, deliberate and make ‘choices’. However, what they do not have is equal ability in
any of these respects. Sam finds it easy to make ‘good choices’ and undertake reflective,
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ethical action, whereas Farah does not. But note that neither of them chose to have the
personalities and proclivities that they do (Strawson 1994). And therefore, neither
deserves praise or blame for the outcome, because neither is responsible, in the sense
of being in control of their differing choice-making abilities. If the story had been
different so that Sam’s family was rich and Farah’s poor, the luck egalitarian critique
would be familiar. The story we have told, however, is intentionally different. The issue
of material luck has been bracketed to enable us to see clearly the issue of luck-based
differences in mental resources. Indeed, it is probably fair to say that whereas luck
egalitarians have been astute in their critique of the unfairness of material luck, they
have been less so in terms of their critique of psychological luck. This is a problem
because psychological resources are just as important as material ones for influencing
life prospects.10
The most common belief about desert or responsibility (which I suspect is held
implicitly by many luck egalitarians) is the conventional legal status quo that every adult
who passes the threshold of minimal competency (i.e. is neither a child nor insane) is
fully responsible for their actions, and therefore morally deserves the money they receive
for work, or the punishment they receive for crime. In Daniel Dennett’s formulation,

Moral development is not a race at all, with a single winner and everyone else ranked
behind, but a process that apparently brings people sooner or later to a sort of plateau of
development . . . everyone comes out more or less in the same league. (2015, 104)11

The core idea is that once you achieve a certain minimal level of competence (or some
other key criterion), then you have the ability to make choices, reflect on alternatives,
exert effort and so have responsibility for your actions. For threshold advocates of
responsibility, one’s past and social circumstance is irrelevant. All that matters is
whether today, right now, one has passed the threshold of responsibility – if yes, then
they are morally responsible, if not then one is not.
Although this perspective is very common – indeed, it forms the foundation of our
legal system – it is actually quite strange. One issue is that two people can both pass the
threshold and yet have substantially different choice-making capacities (i.e. very differ-
ent levels of will power, competence, effortability, deliberative capacity and so on),
leading to very different kinds of choices. So to say that they are both equally morally
responsible is to say that they equally deserve praise/blame for their outcomes, which is
unfair, because the outcomes are due to their arbitrarily different capacities. Both Sam
and Farah have passed the threshold of minimal competence – both have a minimal
capacity to reflect, make an effort, and so on. But to say that they are thereby equally
morally responsible is bizarre and blind – a kind of false, formal egalitarianism. It
ignores all the evidence of the very real, substantive differences between them. Sam
has significant (unchosen) advantages in terms of his mental resources, while Farah has
all kinds of (unchosen) disadvantages. How then is it possibly fair to hold them to the
same level of responsibility? Of course, Sam and Farah made choices and continue to
make them – they are not robots – but they do so with vastly different resources at their
disposal.12
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Another problem with the threshold view is that it makes no sense why two people with
quite similar capacities who fall just on opposite sides of the threshold are viewed as being
in fundamentally different camps, whereas two people who both surpass the threshold, yet
are much further apart in terms of their capacities, are judged to be in the same camp –
fully deserving of praise or blame. Given that, empirically, our capacities exist on spectra,
the belief that there is one and only one specific threshold that matters for responsibility
makes no logical sense. For all these reasons we should prefer what we might call the
‘spectrum view of human abilities’ as opposed to the standard binary threshold view.
Now it might be objected that our ability to make choices is not due entirely to luck
because it is within our control, at least partially, to choose to educate and train ourselves
to have better and stronger capacities; in other words, one might argue that we can
always choose to become better at making choices. Hence the common (though I think
incorrect) clichés that ‘winners make their own luck’ and ‘it’s not the cards you’re dealt
that matters but how you play your hand’.
That response fails for two reasons. First, even if we grant that some of our choice-
making ability comes from previous choices, this is only true at the margin. Granted, there
is some room for conscious change, nevertheless most of us are indelibly shaped by the
personalities and proclivities that we inherited from our emergence out of adolescence. We
are not creators of ourselves (the exuberance of certain existentialists notwithstanding). We
cannot shape our own personalities to be any particular way that we might want nor modify
the deep features of our psychology as if we were sculpting a statue. For instance, we do not,
generally speaking, choose our level of implicit bias, optimism, self-confidence, enjoyment
of deliberation or brain chemistry. Such things are largely out of our hands, resulting from
random chance or the impress of surrounding social hierarchies on our minds.13 Unless one
believes, per impossibile, that we are fully self-creators, the responsibility-advocate who
thinks we are somewhat able to change ourselves must also accept that we are somewhat
unable to do so – our personalities are due to a mix of autonomous choice and luck. But this
places the responsibility-advocate in a bind. Either they simply ignore the problem and say
that people should be rewarded for all their choices even though these are partially con-
stituted by luck (which is akin to saying that rewarding people on the basis of luck – such as
height or skin colour – is acceptable, if only partially so); or the responsibility-advocate
must specify some way of being able to analytically separate the degree to which ones
capabilities are due to autonomous choice from the degree to which they are due to luck.
Yet that is a hopeless task. Luck and choice are intertwined through and through, like the
way that sunlight is incorporated into the carbon structure of the wood in a tree. Or, for
another analogy, consider the famous nature/nurture dichotomy. That dichotomy is now
widely recognized as invalid because there is no meaning to human ‘nature’ outside of an
environmental context; nurture and nature are irreducibly co-constitutive. That is how we
should understand choice; it has no existence apart from luck; ‘choice’ and ‘luck’ are
similarly irreducibly co-constitutive of human abilities.
A second, and even more fundamental problem is that even granting that we can choose
to improve our choice-making capabilities to some (I think limited) degree, this does not
rescue desert, it merely pushes the problem back a stage, since different people have
unchosen and very different abilities to engage in this kind of higher-level self-
improvement. So the question now becomes: Why should some receive praise over others
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due to their greater luck in possessing superior higher-order capacities? Some people are
blessed with significant higher-order abilities to reflect on their condition and seek to alter
their personality, with the focus and determination to see such changes through – whereas
others lack such abilities. But possession of this kind of ability is just as arbitrary as any
other. Surely one cannot claim that they chose to have the capacity to increase their choice-
making abilities. It cannot be ‘choice’ all the way down. As naturalistic creatures, we do
not will ourselves into being. We do not (to use Nietzsche’s evocative phrase) pull our-
selves ‘up into existence by the hair, out of the swamps of nothingness’ (quoted in
Martinez 2016, 13). At some point – most conspicuously, in the years leading up to
adulthood – our differential abilities to engage in higher order self-improvement, like
every other ability, simply emerge. They develop from the normal human processes of
learning and development; they are manifestly not the result of autonomous choice.
Effortability and self-improvement ability are themselves simply skills – no different from
throwing a football or singing in perfect pitch. We differ in these meta-abilities just as
deeply, and just as arbitrarily, as any other skill (how could it possibly be any different for
empirical beings without divine or transcendental qualities?)
Consider again the case of Sam and Farah. The hardcore libertarian will want to insist
that Farah has only herself to blame for how her life turned out, since regardless of her
life history or social circumstance, she can always (supposedly) choose to rise above her
circumstance by practicing to improve her work ethic or deliberative capacities. But that
is ludicrous; she did not choose to have depression, learned helplessness, low self-
efficacy and chronic pain – all of which severely limit her abilities to self-improve.
Those attributes were due to bad luck. They were thrust upon her by circumstance. So to
blame her for such luck (or to praise Sam for the lucky possession of his higher-order
faculties) is morally equivalent to blaming her for being female or black.
Perhaps, the most sophisticated objection to my critique of choice and desert comes
from John Roemer (1993, 1998, 2003). His position is complex, but the essential points
are as follows: Although individuals do differ in the total amount of psychological
resources they possess (e.g. in terms of the total amount of effort, or will-power, or
conscientious striving, that one is capable of exerting), as autonomous adults they nev-
ertheless all share the capacity to exert more or less effort. In other words, everyone is in
control of the degree of effort that they exert. One useful metaphor for this idea comes
from David Alm (2011): we can think of our abilities as a fuel tank; although we all have
different size tanks, we nevertheless all have the same autonomous ability (supposedly)
to use, say, a quarter, half or all of our tank. Along these lines, Roemer tells us to
conceive of effort – or for our purposes, ‘choice-making ability’ – not in absolute terms
(which are out of our control and therefore unsuitable for desert), but in proportional
terms (which he believes are in our control, and therefore suitable for desert).
This is an ingenious attempt to ground desert claims. Unfortunately, it is not success-
ful. The problem is that individuals are not in fact in control of the degree of effort that
they exert. This is a sleight of hand; since it is true that individuals can all exert more or
less effort, it is tempting to conclude that we all do so equally autonomously. But that is
false. The decision to exert some, most, or all of one’s energy is itself a decision that will
be largely influenced by one’s individual personality – one’s proclivities, desires, pain
thresholds, temperament and so on. Does Roemer really believe that someone who is
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clinically depressed can choose to exert the same degree of effort as a healthy and happy
person? In fact, different people have, pace Roemer, different abilities to exert not just an
amount of effort but a degree of effort too. (It’s a sleight of hand because Roemer plasters
over the differential ability to exert degrees of effort that each individual possesses by
simply labelling all such differences with the same label of ‘autonomy’.)
If it were true that everyone, universally, shares the same ability to autonomously
choose their degree of effort, then everyone must be able to exert, say, 10% of their total
effort one hour, and then 20% of their remaining effort for the second hour, then 30% of
their remaining effort for the third hour, and so on in this careful, disciplined, meticulous,
way. But that is clearly not equally possible for everyone. Being able to choose the
degree of effort that one exerts on a particular activity, or for a particular amount of time,
is itself a kind of skill that different people will possess to different degrees. This proves
that even Roemer’s ‘propensity to exert degree of effort’ is not a pure matter of auton-
omy, but is itself a matter of luck, and therefore cannot serve as a basis for moral desert.
We can see the problem by re-examining Alm’s metaphor of the fuel tank. Alm (and
Roemer) conceive of autonomy as the supposedly universal ability of each of us to use
more or less of our ‘fuel tank’. But this raises the question: Who is driving the car?!
Empirically variable human beings or transcendent god-like beings? The purpose of the
gas tank metaphor is that it is supposed to give a naturalistic account of our empirically
differing capacities. But if everyone, universally, is equally capable of pushing the
accelerator/brake of the car to the exact same degree, with the exact same precision as
everyone else (as the metaphor implies), this would seem to bring a ghost in to the
machine through the back door.14
The bottom line is that Roemer cannot escape the fundamental fact that we cannot
separate our autonomous choice-making abilities from the unchosen, arbitrary features
of our selves. And so to reward or punish someone due to their ‘propensity to exert
effort’ is still to reward or punish them for arbitrary features like skin colour.
At this point, the sceptical reader will surely balk: Can we really not hold people
differentially deserving? If two brothers are raised in the same family, yet one chooses to
work hard – getting up at 6 am every morning, working until late at night – while the
other works far less, choosing to spend much of his time in bed, can we not say that the
first morally deserves more?
The answer is no. The reason that that they behave differently is that there are myriad
unchosen aspects of their personality which influence their behaviour. One brother has
high levels of effortability and self-confidence, while the other has low self-efficacy and
chronic pain. Such differences – as in the case of Sam and Farah – are morally arbitrary
because they were not chosen. Neither brother chose to have the personality he has. Both
have some abilities to change, but neither of them chose the amount of meta-ability they
have to self-improve. Therefore, praising the first and blaming the latter is just as morally
unfair as punishing someone for, say, developing a brain tumour which impacts beha-
viour. We are not in charge of the elements that make us us. The implication of all this is
that the goal of distributive justice should not be to establish just deserts. (Below I argue
that a better goal is to provide material and social conditions for all to acquire a good life,
regardless of our choices.)
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The most common objection to an account like mine is concern over what it means for
criminal responsibility. Are we no longer able to blame and punish a criminal for, say,
committing physical assault? Are they no longer responsible for their choices?
The response is that while it is easy to cavalierly blame, it is notoriously difficult to
establish someone’s actual degree of criminal responsibility. Everyone recognizes that
children and the insane are not criminally responsible. But once we drop the naive
binary threshold view (which says that everyone else has full and exactly the same
level of responsibility), we recognize that humans come in all shapes and sizes, that
moral ability to make ethical decisions and follow the law, like any other human
capability, exists on a spectrum, coming in vastly differing amounts, which different
people possess arbitrarily. Some are mentally ill. Some find it very difficult to contain
their anger. Some are less able to reason through the consequences of their actions.
Some have been socialized into violence and rely on it habitually. Some have faced
years of sexual or racial trauma that builds up to the point where one is liable to
explode at the latest microaggression, and on and on. As soon as we start to inquire
seriously into one’s moral deserts, we are sent down the rabbit hole of needing to
separate the degree of one’s actions that one can be held responsible for, versus the
degree to which one cannot. But that is a dead end. It is a fool’s errand to think that we
can ever burrow deeply enough into people’s brains or backgrounds to establish clear
and accurate measures of genuine culpability. We will always be at a loss to know how
to weigh one’s true moral deserts vis-à-vis others, and therefore at a loss for attributing
a fair, proportionate punishment. If we simply shrug our shoulders and continue to
punish heterogenous people according to a homogenous standard, we will thereby be
punishing them for things that are out of their control (we might as well punish people
for the colour of their eyes or their sexual preferences).
None of this is to say that we should do nothing when crime occurs. The point is that
we should change our focus. We should shift from seeing criminal justice as about
establishing just deserts, to instead seeing the goal as preventing such harm from reoc-
curring, by inducing people to change their behaviour in the future. This could mean
swapping judicial tools away from retributive ‘eye for eye’ punishment, towards reha-
bilitation, transforming the social conditions that cause crime in the first place (poverty,
marginalization, childhood trauma, etc.), and if necessary, using judicial punishments
not as retribution but as future deterrence.
Let us sum up. What is powerful in luck egalitarianism is its sensitivity to luck and
arbitrariness. What is problematic is the belief that ‘choice’ provides legitimate grounds
for inequality. This is wrong because choice-making capacities are largely outside of
one’s control; they are largely due to luck. Therefore, any attempt to reward ‘effort’ or
‘reason’ or ‘deliberation’ or ‘conscientious striving’ (even if useful for pragmatic rea-
sons, which we discuss below) is morally akin to rewarding individuals for possessing
natural talent or a large inheritance or white skin. This is not to deny the existence of
autonomy. Most people do have autonomous abilities. They can exert effort and make
moral judgements. However, these are all empirical skills, meaning that individuals
differ mightily in their possession – some have more, some have less. And most impor-
tantly, the possession of differential skill in all these areas is due to luck and so morally
arbitrary. We can never separate a pure autonomous part of our self from unchosen luck.
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For such reasons, we should be immensely sceptical of the claim that choice legitimately
grounds inequalities.
The upshot is that the luck egalitarian embrace of ‘choice’ and responsibility took
egalitarianism in the wrong direction. Unsurprisingly, bringing in a central tenet of
conservatism makes the theory more conservative – more harsh and uncompassionate,
more individualistic and less sensitive to historical and social forces. Instead, I have
argued that egalitarianism should move in the opposite direction: we should reduce the
emphasis on ‘choice’ and responsibility by being more sensitive to the degree in which
social circumstance, as well as chance and caprice, affects us all – our abilities, our
accomplishments – in arbitrarily different ways. This shift in perspective allows us to be
more caring and compassionate to those who ‘choose’ poorly and so end up with less of
the good things in life.
Note that it is entirely possible for luck egalitarians to agree with this critique. They
can admit that, ‘to the extent that choice-making capabilities really are due to luck, we
agree that they do not legitimate inequalities’. (One can easily imagine GA Cohen, for
instance, taking such a position.) Indeed, I believe that a consistent luck egalitarian must,
in following the psychological and sociological evidence, follow this path. If I am right
about this, then we see that luck egalitarianism is actually a much stranger doctrine than
is typically realized, in that taking it seriously leads to it being undermined. Paradoxi-
cally, one cannot actually be a consistent luck egalitarian (at least in the conventional
sense that presupposes a clear and crisp distinction between luck and choice).
The question then becomes, given that luck egalitarianism (or what I called ‘luck-
vs-choice egalitarianism’) is based on the dichotomy of ‘luck’ versus ‘choice’, what
is left of the theory when one of its two foundational categories is discarded? Once
we have cleared away the debris, I am not sure whether a coherent theory remains
(are all inequalities now rendered illegitimate, no matter what?). In the real world,
of course, people will always make choices, and so ‘choice’ will invariably remain a
central grammar of people’s lives. However, what is not necessary is for choice to
be a guiding principle of egalitarian social policy. What is clearer is the direction
that egalitarianism is pushed: the arguments of these pages naturally lead us to focus
less on the ‘choices’ people make and more on the things that they need. Luck
egalitarianism thus ends up pointing us towards a different kind of egalitarianism,
one that we develop below.

2. Relational egalitarianism
Let us now briefly turn to relational egalitarianism. While this too is now a broad field,
the central idea is that the focus of egalitarianism should not be luck and choice but the
character of social relationships. The general goal being to replace hierarchical and
disrespectful relationships with democratic and respectful ones (Anderson 1999; Fourie
et al. 2015; Scheffler 2003, 2005; Schemmel 2011).
There is much to admire in the writings of relational egalitarians. For instance,
Elizabeth Anderson (1999) and Samuel Scheffler (2005) have given us penetrating
accounts of the problems that arise from leaning too heavily on the notion of individual
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choice – such as harshness and moralism. They are also surely right to emphasize the
importance – indeed the centrality – of relationships for any viable theory of equality.
However, the shift away from luck and choice has not been an entirely positive
development. I want to highlight two basic problems with the relational egalitarian
framework.
The first problem is that some of the inequalities that we face are not primarily about
relationships but are constituted by unfair distributions of opportunities to flourish and
lead a good life. Opportunities are a fundamental dimension of equality, just as important
as relationships, though relational egalitarians tend to ignore them – especially when the
opportunities in question are not clearly connected to issues of disrespect or domination.
For instance, consider the policy goal of accessible (free or at least cheap) university
education for life. The reason why many progressives support this goal is for the oppor-
tunities that it offers individuals to flourish – not only in terms of getting good jobs but in
terms of expanding one’s horizons and developing one’s capabilities. Relational egali-
tarianism, on the other hand, has no clear basis for advocating for this policy, because it’s
hard (though perhaps not impossible with sufficient stretching) to argue that a lack of
opportunity to go to university necessarily leads to disrespect or domination, since surely
many people are very happy to bypass university and do not suffer disrespect or dom-
ination because of it. So Anderson argues that relational egalitarianism requires only that
citizens have ‘enough human capital to function as an equal in civil society’, which she
says requires only ‘a high school diploma or its equivalent’ (2007, 615, 620). The
problem with such an approach is that seeing access to university as solely about its
impact on relational issues of democracy or domination, misses its importance in terms
of individual opportunity.15
Much the same could be said for the issue of free time. A long-standing goal of the
socialist left has been to create the material conditions for everyone to possess free time
(undergirded by economic security), so that regular people become increasingly free to
devote themselves to whatever matters most in their lives – art, music, philosophy,
family, athletics or whatever it may be. Here again, the heart of the aspiration for
egalitarians of this sort is not avoiding disrespect or domination, it’s not relational at
all, it’s rather about having the opportunities to flourish, to ‘live deeply and suck the
marrow of life’, as Thoreau ([1854] 1959) would say. What relational egalitarianism
misses, in other words, is that the goal for progressives cannot be reduced to the absence
of domination; it is just as much the presence of opportunities to flourish – so that
everyone, not just the privileged, can access beauty, joy, meaning and purpose, so that
everyone can live freely and fully, sufficiently secure in the material foundations of their
lives to be able to explore the inner and outer reaches of their souls.
The second and, for our purposes, the main problem with relational egalitarianism is
that is permits significant inequalities between people on the basis of brute luck. Con-
sider again the case of the wealthy Sam and the impoverished Farah. Relational Egali-
tarianism will want to aid Farah insofar as she is being disrespected or dominated. But
that is as far as the doctrine can go. Insofar as she simply has a worse life, even a much
worse life (in terms of resources, well-being, opportunities or other metrics that are not
strictly relational) due to misfortune, relational egalitarianism has nothing to say.
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The problem here is particularly acute in the case of individuals with different abilities
and impairments. For example, Jack and John are friends of similar age and abilities, just
about to graduate university and looking forward to full, flourishing lives, when their car is
hit by a drunk driver. Jack suffers partial brain damage, leaving him with reduced IQ,
reduced speaking abilities, stiff and awkward body movements, as well as chronic fatigue.
John also hits his head, but the accident does no damage, and actually leaves him with a
much-improved photographic memory16 (in addition to his already high IQ, developed
social skills and high levels of bodily fitness and energy). The consequence is that, in the
years that follow, Jack fares much worse in the market economy than John. Jack ends up
working part-time stacking shelves in a grocery store, whereas John becomes a corporate
executive. John earns one-hundred times greater income and accumulates one-thousand
times more wealth, resulting in a much happier, more flourishing life.
What can relational egalitarianism say about this inequality? If Jack is being disre-
spected or dominated, then relational egalitarianism has much to say. But it’s easy to
imagine situations where he is not; perhaps he works at a minimum wage job where he is
protected by a strong union and treated kindly and empathetically by his managers and
co-workers. In such cases, where Jack is not dominated or disrespected, but simply much
worse off, relational egalitarianism has nothing much to say. So it appears that relational
egalitarianism has limited resources for objecting to a society where the ‘productive’
earn 10-times, 100-times or even 1000-times more than the ‘unproductive’ due to mere
luck. Of course, at some point, they can say that very high levels of inequality are a risk
to democracy and so should be limited, but that is weak tea indeed, and scarce comfort to
the relatively impoverished Jacks of the world.
The root problem here is that relational egalitarianism has lost the essential insight of
luck egalitarianism: that it is unfair and wrong, deeply wrong, for individuals to suffer
significantly worse lives than others through no fault of their own. Relational egalitar-
ianism has no resources for saying the obvious thing: that significant differences in life
opportunities resulting from brute luck are offensive. To shrug at the fact that Jack leads
a significantly worse life than John due to differences in brute luck is to fail to treat them
with equal moral worth and dignity. It is morally equivalent to rewarding and punishing
them for differences in the colour of their skin. A just society would therefore differ
significantly from relational egalitarianism in this regard. It would aim to provide Jack
and John with as similar resources and life opportunities as possible. Granted, it will
likely not be possible to do this entirely within the framework of a market economy (we
discuss this issue further below), but it is surely possible to dramatically shrink the
inequalities that do exist, increasing the entitlements provided for Jack, paid for by
redistributing the income of John. Perhaps, differences of the order of 5:1 or 10:1 are
necessary for markets to function, but those of the order of 100:1 and 1000:1 are not.17 In
contrast to relational egalitarianism, a just society would aim to reduce such luck-based
inequalities as much as feasible.

3. Good life egalitarianism

Given what we have seen of luck egalitarianism and relational egalitarianism, the ques-
tion becomes: How can we retain the strengths of these theories (in particular, the
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emphasis on the importance of luck-based arbitrariness, as well as the importance of

social relationships in impacting good lives), while avoiding their weaknesses (in par-
ticular, the focus on choice and responsibility)? My answer is that we should concep-
tualize equality in terms of what I call GLE: given the arbitrary differences in individual
capacities – including choice-making capacities – equality should not depend on ‘good
choices’, but instead should aim to guarantee to all a robust and roughly equal distribu-
tion of the essential goods necessary for living a good life.
What are these essential goods? That is a very difficult question, based as it is on
one’s perspective of what constitutes good and valuable human lives. Here I will only
suggest (but not defend) the proposal that we should recognize two main categories of
essential goods. First, everyone should be assured good opportunity rights, that is, the
means to self-determine, so that they can live the lives that they autonomously value. The
essential prerequisites for this include things like physical security, civil rights, educa-
tion, economic security and free time. The level at which these things can be provided
will depend on context, but in the rich countries of the Global North,18 they should
include, above and beyond the standard package of liberal rights, things like universal
healthcare, access to free (or heavily subsidized) post-secondary education, income
security (such as through a Basic Income and extensive public services such as afford-
able housing, public transit, universal childcare, and pensions) and rights to quality, part-
time work (Malleson, forthcoming), all of which must be accessible to differently abled
bodies. Second, everyone should be assured good relationship rights, that is, the goods
necessary for ensuring egalitarian social relationships (so that workplaces, families and
the state treat their members with equal respect, equal status and, where appropriate,
equal democratic rights).19 The goal of GLE, in other words, is to move much closer
towards a society of equal outcomes, by raising the bottom through increased provision
of the essential goods, paid for by raising taxes to lower the top. Such a society might be
envisioned as a market socialist society, with high levels of redistributive taxation (so
that income differentials are compressed to an order of perhaps 5 to 1 or 10 to 1),
significant market regulations, extensive public services, a Basic Income, widespread
workplace democracy, with typical employment being that of flexible, quality part-time
work of, say, 15–30 hours per week. The details are beyond the scope of this article, but
the important point here is that GLE envisions a robust social minimum, accessible to all.
Not merely a meagre safety net, but a much more significant guarantee of the conditions
for a comfortable, relatively affluent, flourishing life for all.
The foundation of GLE is the belief that the distribution of capacities to make good
choices is deeply arbitrary. It follows from this that the distribution of essential goods
should not be based on ‘choice’ but rather on need. In this way, GLE breaks apart the two
dimensions of luck egalitarianism – it maintains the focus on luck and arbitrariness,
while bracketing the role of choice and responsibility. This shift from ‘choice’ to ‘need’
is analogous to the shift that many progressives have long advocated vis-à-vis criminal
justice, urging us to shift from backward-looking punishment to forward-looking reha-
bilitation. Just as an improved criminal system would, arguably, be one that focuses less
on punishment and more on rehabilitation (Alexander 2010; Davis 2003; Rusche and
Kirchheimer 2003), saying ‘It is not your past criminal choices that matter, but what you
need to be able to live a crime-free life in the future’, so should a just distributive system
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be one that increasingly says, ‘It is not your past economic choices that matter, but what
you need to be able to live a good, flourishing life in the future’. GLE is thus not a desert-
based view of distributive justice but a needs-based one (where the essential needs are
defined through democratic deliberation by society at large20).
What role, then, would choice actually play in such a society? People, of course, make
countless choices all the time. We choose who to date and partner, how much schooling
to undertake, how many hours to spend at the office, whether to have kids, whether to
save or consume and on and on. These choices ineluctably lead to differences between
people. The difficult question is deciding when such differences are problematic enough
that we wish to call them ‘inequalities’, and aspire to mitigate them. Every egalitarian
theory must provide an answer to this fundamental question, and the force of that answer
will carry significant weight in terms of the persuasiveness of the theory as a whole. For
GLE, the answer is that there are certain areas that are so fundamental for good lives that
they must not be losable, regardless of ‘choice’. These are the essential goods (civil
rights, income security, healthcare, anti-discrimination policy and so on). Essential
because they are the foundation for good lives. They are the basic entitlements of
everyone. Of course, no one is forced to avail themselves of such goods if they do not
wish to, but access to them is guaranteed (with one caveat to be addressed shortly). This
means that, in contrast with some of the more conservative luck egalitarians, under GLE
individuals like Bert who ‘choose’ to not wear a motorcycle helmet and then get into an
accident would still be guaranteed healthcare.21 Individuals who have ‘chosen’ to drop
out of university would always have the option of re-attending in the future for free.
Those who ‘choose’ to quit their job would always be provided with basic economic
security, and so on.
Does this mean that choice should have no impact in how people’s lives turn out? No.
There are two vitally important countervailing issues to take heed of. First, there are
personal preferences for non-essential goods. If X spends their disposable income on
expensive cars, while Y prefers to take the bus so as to save more for retirement, X
cannot then complain that they deserve compensation because they end up poorer than
Y. As long as both possess basic economic security, no genuine ‘inequality’ results from
individuals choosing to spend their disposable income differently. Likewise, if Z chooses
to live an ascetic life in a monastery, their relative poverty is not something that society
needs mitigate (as long as they always have secure access to jobs and educational
opportunities should they desire them in the future). The underlying rationale in such
cases is that it is important for society to provide ample space for the free play of
personal preferences. We do not want bureaucrats meddling and interfering in our every-
day choices. And since these preferences are playing out in the realm of non-essential
goods, we need not be overly worried about the differences that accrue.
Second, there are many areas in which we have strong pragmatic and instrumental
reasons for wanting choices to be consequential. For example, in order for a market
system to function reasonably well, it makes pragmatic sense to allow people who
‘choose’ to work in areas of greater demand, or for those who ‘choose’ to work longer
hours to receive somewhat more income than others, since encouraging such choices can
lead to positive benefits for society as a whole. (Though not completely fair, this is an
acceptable compromise with pragmatism, as long as the top income levels are not
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permitted to go too much higher than others). Likewise, if a sociopath ‘chooses’ to

murder someone, it may well be pragmatically necessary for society to protect itself
by confining that person (though hopefully in a hospital rather than a prison cage). This is
the caveat mentioned above – in rare cases like this, an individual’s choices may need to
lead to a reduction in essential goods (such as the right to live freely), because society
needs to protect itself (though even here the losses should be as minimal as possible, the
goal should be more rehabilitative than punitive, and the perpetrators’ essential rights
should be restored as soon as possible). For both the economic and criminal cases, the
rationale for permitting choice to lead to differences between us is instrumental – in that
it is frequently necessary to provide overarching systems of incentives and disincentives
to ensure the stability and quality of social life.
It is useful to emphasize an important point here, which is that the scale of inequalities
between people cannot be totally extinguished, but they can be significantly compressed.
In the case of distributive justice, the market requires some inequality to function. But it
absolutely does not require the huge 200 or 300:1 pay differentials currently existing
between American CEOs and their workers (Reich 2015). Similarly, for criminal justice,
it may be that some punishment is required to disincentivize crime. But long prison
sentences, dehumanizing conditions, solitary confinement and the death penalty are
clearly not. The bottom line is that GLE recognizes – as any adequate theory of justice
must – a necessary tension between the fact that some inequalities are useful for prag-
matic reasons, with the truth that inequalities are usually morally undeserved. The
distinctiveness of GLE is in arguing that that due to the arbitrariness of ‘choice’, we
should compress these inequalities as far as possible. We cannot have total equality of
outcome, but we can and should aim for something quite close to it.
We are now able to answer the question of when choices should legitimately ground
differences between people (versus when egalitarian social policy should attempt to
intervene). For GLE, the answer is demarcated by the category of essential goods. In
other words, the fundamental distinction is not between choice and luck (since ‘choice’
is such a problematic category) but between essential and non-essential goods. Access to
the former are (for the most part) insensitive to choice, whereas the latter are sensitive to
it. As we have seen, the rationale for such a division is twofold. On the one hand, we want
extensive space for the expression of personal preferences, while simultaneously recog-
nizing that such preferences are deeply inflected by arbitrariness, and so mustn’t under-
mine one’s ability to access the essential goods in life. On the other, it is socially useful
in many instances to incentivize certain kinds of choices through rewards or punish-
ments, though here too such pragmatism must be circumscribed to not undermine access
to essential goods.
In contrast to other theorists (such as Nussbaum (2003)), the reader will note that GLE
is not a sufficientarian theory but an egalitarian one, in that the primary impulse is
towards equality of outcomes (cf. Arneson 2005; Crisp 2003; Frankfurt 1987). Whereas
sufficientarians are, by definition, unperturbed by the existence of inequalities above the
sufficiency threshold, GLE sees those differences as arbitrary too. The wealth of John is
just as morally arbitrary as the poverty of Jack. However, as we have noted, complete
equality of outcome is neither possible nor desirable, and so the ultimate goal of GLE is
not strict equal outcomes but reducing inequalities as much as practically feasible. In
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practical terms, this requires raising the bottom (by enhancing access to essential goods)
and lowering the top (through redistributive taxation).
This said, although GLE is an egalitarian theory, that should not be interpreted to
mean that equality is the only goal that matters for social justice. In many contexts,
particularly poor countries, the primary aim may not be equality but growth to achieve a
satisfactory level of sufficiency for all. In some contexts, the goals of equality and
sufficiency might coincide, but in some cases they may diverge. For instance, if for
some reason the only possible way for a society to achieve a basic level of sufficiency for
all is by accepting more inequality (or, conversely, if the only way to increase equality in
society is by levelling down in a way that reduces everyone’s income), then there is a
difficult trade-off. On the one hand, a society with more equality is desirable on the
grounds that we have been studying here (reducing the impact of bad brute luck on one’s
life and reducing relational domination and disrespect). On the other hand, a society with
improved income for the poor is also clearly desirable. I do not believe there is a simple a
priori solution here. Deciding how to make this trade-off will depend on careful evalua-
tion of many empirical, contingent factors: Is it really true that growth requires more
inequality? What are the levels of inequality (Are they extreme? Are the poor dominated
by the rich?) What are the levels of poverty (How poor are the poor? Are they starving or
simply less well-off?). Although I cannot defend it here, it seems reasonable to suspect
that when countries reach the levels of material prosperity existing in the Global North
today (and particularly when we consider the constraints of climate change), then growth
should increasingly take a backseat to concerns of equality.
Let us wrap up our exploration of GLE by taking note of a few illustrative contrasts
between it and the now-dominant theories of egalitarianism. Consider all of those who, for
whatever reason, suffer a difficult period in their lives. A ‘chooses’ to drop out of univer-
sity due to depression. B, suffering from the trauma of residential schools and racial
stigma, “chooses” to seek solace in drugs and alcohol, eventually ending up on the street
unable to pay their rent. The logic of luck egalitarianism (though I suspect not the heart of
many of the humane really existing luck egalitarians) is to simply say ‘too bad; you made
your bed; you must sleep in it’. Relational egalitarianism does somewhat better, but
perhaps not much. The logic of their position is that such circumstances are only a problem
– and support should only be offered – to the extent that such people risk disrespect and
domination. Do they? Perhaps, but perhaps not. (For instance, what Anderson (2007) says
about education makes it seem that her version of relational egalitarianism would offer
little support to A. And what she says elsewhere (e.g. 1999, 325) about poverty implies that
as long as B can acquire ‘basic capabilities’ and is not a ‘peon’, then no additional support
is required).22 There are also cases – like where C suffers a bodily impairment and is forced
to quit their job – where relational egalitarianism actually appears more cold-hearted than
luck egalitarianism, as it is unattuned to misfortune, and so would seem to allow C to be
live a life that is significantly worse-off than their luckier neighbours as long as they are
not disrespected or dominated.
By contrast, GLE performs significantly better. In guaranteeing to such people per-
petual access to the essential goods, regardless of their past ‘bad choices’, it insists that
such choices should not define their future lives. It is thereby a theory of considerable
warmth and compassion, even, if it is not too much to say, of (structural) love. As we
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Philosophy and Social Criticism XX(X)

have seen, all choice-based theories (be they luck egalitarian or neoliberal) tend to be
moralistic and harsh, admonishing people for making mistakes and implying that their
situation is their own fault. That is no accident; such moralism flows directly from the
very DNA of a choice- and responsibility-based philosophy; indeed, it is the very point.
The antidote to such moralism is compassion and love, since the primary impulse of
compassion is its non-conditionality, its unconditional warmth, its desire to focus not on
one’s faults but on one’s humanity, emphasizing the flickering all-too-brief existence of
a human life and the overwhelming need for it to be as good as possible.
GLE is thus motivated at the deepest level by two primary impulses: an emotive sense
of love and compassion (that so many people live lives of pain, suffering and depriva-
tion), with an analytical scepticism of choice (that such suffering could be attributed to
their own fault or responsibility). These two impulses merge in the desire for a robust
safety net, which says to all, we have your back; if and when you fall in life, it’s ok, we
will support you. Like a loving family to their children, GLE says to its residents,

No matter what choices you make in your life, no matter what accidents or misfortunes
befall you, you will be (non-paternalistically) cared for and supported. Even if we dislike
your choices, indeed, even if, in extremis, we must occasionally restrain your choices to
prevent harm to others, you will still never be abandoned to the winds of fortune.

To update the old leveller slogan, GLE might say, ‘We believe that even the most
wayward they has as much a life to live, as the greatest they’.23

4. Conclusion
This article has sought to carve a new path between the two dominant wings of contem-
porary egalitarianism: Luck egalitarianism and relational egalitarianism. Whereas Cohen
saw the introduction of choice and responsibility into egalitarianism as a ‘service’, it
should, in fact, be more accurately seen as a Trojan Horse. The luck egalitarian emphasis
on choice and personal responsibility is misplaced because individuals differ so deeply,
and arbitrarily, in their choice-making capacities. Allowing inequalities to result from
‘choice’ is akin to allowing inequalities to stem from the possession of any other morally
arbitrary factor – such as skin colour or gender. Just as progressives have rightly rejected
these latter as appropriate bases for distributive justice, so should we be increasingly
sceptical of the salience of the former. The move towards relational egalitarianism has
been a case of two-steps forward, one-step back. While the (partial) shift away from the
focus on choice is salutary, the concurrent rejection of luck is problematic, given the
prevalence and importance of luck-based discrepancies in opportunities to lead a good
life. GLE is one attempt to retain the strengths of these theories while avoiding their
weaknesses. The guiding idea is that given the unavoidable arbitrariness of human capa-
cities, the foundation for a good life should be assured for people regardless of the actual
choices that they make. The essential goods necessary for leading a good life – such as the
opportunities to self-determine and to enjoy non-dominating social relationships – should
be guaranteed to all. Choice will necessarily play an important role in any free and healthy
society, but its impact on distributive outcomes should be highly circumscribed.
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21

Acknowledgements
Many thanks to Samuel Bagg, David Borman, Chi Kwok, and the anonymous reviewers for their
invaluable help with earlier drafts of this paper. In particular, thanks to Bruce Waller for inspiring
me to take up this line of thought. All errors and omissions are, of course, my own.

ORCID iD
Tom Malleson https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3708-7907

Notes
1. This phrase is from Rawls (1971, 72), though he himself is usually not seen as a luck
egalitarian (Scheffler 2003).
2. For an opposing view, see (Malleson, 2016).
3. It is interesting to note, for instance, that Dworkin apparently is opposed to a guaranteed basic
income (which, in its unconditionality, is very similar to what I will argue for here) on the
same grounds of personal responsibility that conservatives constantly evoke (Parijs 2009, 3).
4. The literature on desert is large. Prominent works include Feinberg (1970), Miller (1999),
Olsaretti (2003), Pojman and McLeod (1999), Sher (1987), and of course, the work that started
much of the contemporary debate, Rawls (1971).
5. An alternative way to formulate this idea is that the activity or performance which is the basis
of one’s deserts must not be the result of luck.
6. Robert Nozick (1974) and David Miller (1999) have argued that desert does not require
control. Such a view is deeply problematic, since severing desert from control implies that
rich people can be said to deserve the income accruing from their inheritance, White people
can claim to deserve the ‘wages of whiteness’, and kings can deserve rewards for their royal
blood (Arneson 2007) (Malleson, 2016).
7. Closely connected to self-efficacy is the extent to which one possesses an internal versus
external locus of control, that is, whether one tends to attribute the things that happen to them
as within their control or controlled by external factors (Rotter 1966).
8. Related to self-confidence, though distinct, is the degree to which one feels a strong sense of
self-worth. That will clearly impact the kinds of choices one makes. For instance, the evidence
shows that women (due to a lower sense of self-worth, conflict avoidance and other socialized
behaviours) tend to negotiate less over their salary than do men (Leibbrandt and List 2014).
9. As an illustrative anecdote, I once asked the amazingly prolific and successful scholar, Erik Olin
Wright (past President of the American Sociological Association), how he was able to produce
so much – how was he able to sit at his desk for so many hours each day? His honest and humble
response was that he didn’t think it had much to do with anything that he was responsible for, but
rather was attributable to the luck of possessing significant energy, enthusiasm, ability to
concentrate and a disposition from which he derived continual enjoyment and pleasure from
his work. These are wonderful attributes, clearly, but they are not chosen ones.
10. It follows from this that we should abandon Dworkin’s famous distinction between option luck
and brute luck because option luck is invariably infected with brute luck. We can never
extricate the impact of brute luck from one’s psychological decision-making; it is baked in
from the very beginning. The gambler’s ability to make a reasonable judgment about what
actually constitutes a risky gamble (the definition of option luck) is itself a matter of brute luck
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Philosophy and Social Criticism XX(X)

(cf. Voigt 2007). Similarly, we must discard his distinction between ambition and endowment
because ambition is always inextricably impacted by endowment.
11. Elsewhere Dennett says that the inequalities in unchosen character traits don’t really matter
because ‘luck averages out in the long run’ (2015, 104). That is an astonishing statement and
shows the fallacy of the conventional legal status quo. As any sociologist will point out, the
truth is much closer to the exact opposite: privileges tend to cluster and reinforce each other,
while disadvantages tend to accumulate (e.g. Wolff and De-Shalit 2007) (hence the familiar
sociological notion of ‘cumulative disadvantage’). It is as if we set up society to resemble a
boxing match, where people’s rewards or punishments were based on their success in the ring,
and then said that as long as one passed the weight threshold of 100-pounds, then everyone
will be considered an equal boxer, fully personally responsible for their successes or failures.
One can say that a boxing match between a person of 100-pounds and 300-pounds is ‘fair’
because they are both over 100-pounds, but declaring a system fair does not make it so.
12. Some worry that this line of thought which attributes different levels of responsibility to
different people might lead to a view that some people have less human dignity. That would
indeed be a problem, but it does not follow from what I have said. Individuals with fewer
mental resources or reduced autonomy do have reduced responsibility, but they do not thereby
have reduced dignity (unless one simply defines dignity as proportional to responsibility). A
better approach is to insist that human dignity is not an empirical characteristic (otherwise
some animals would presumably count as having human dignity, whereas severely impaired
human beings would not) but a moral one. Dignity should not be based on possessing (an
empirically variable amount of) responsibility; rather it should derive from a moral sense of
membership in the human family.
13. Hierarchy, oppression, poverty and inequality will of course have a tremendous impact on
many of these features. For instance, the violence, abuse, trauma or prejudice that one experi-
ences, particularly while young, often profoundly impacts one’s cognitive faculties in later
life. Social hierarchy does not simply occur in the world, it stamps itself onto our minds.
14. The ghost in Roemer’s account comes across most clearly when he says things like this:
‘Behind the . . . [desert] principle . . . lies, I think, the view that there is a core of human nature
common to all . . . All people would have, in particular, the same capacity to exercise equal
degrees of responsibility for their actions’ (1993, 165–66).
15. Along similar lines, consider the issue of homelessness. When an egalitarian approaches a
homeless man on the frozen street, what is the rationale for giving some money? I doubt that
anyone, even staunch relational egalitarians, give money on the grounds that it will reduce the
man’s stigma, or free him to participate more robustly in democracy (which is not to say that
these issues are non-existent, just decidedly secondary). Instead, the primary reason to give
money is because we want him to have the opportunity to buy some food, get warm and be less
miserable. Our egalitarian intuitions in such cases spring primarily from dismay at his lack of
opportunities to live a good life, not from a concern with his relationships per se.
16. Such occurrences, where head injuries actually result in improved cognitive skills, are rare but
they are not unheard of (Piore 2013).
17. Jeff Bezos has a net wealth of approximately US$160 billion, which translates into an annual
income of roughly US$9.6 billion, whereas the average person living with a disability in the
United States earns US$22,000 (Kraus 2017). That is a ratio of 436,000:1.
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23

18. What does good life egalitarianism (GLE) imply for the countries of the majority world of the
Global South? This is a vitally important question, which is beyond the scope of this article. A
preliminary response is that insofar as contemporary politics continues to be dominated by
nation-states, GLE should be formulated in those terms; so each country in the Global South
would need to democratically determine their own conception of the basket of essential goods.
However, I suspect that the framework could also be usefully applied more radically to the
case of the globe as a whole, thereby requiring extensive global redistribution.
19. Important examples here are policies like campaign finance rules (so that the rich cannot
dominate politics), non-discrimination laws (so that Whites, men, and heterosexuals do not
stigmatize people of colour, women and queers), strong unions and/or enhanced supports to
form worker cooperatives (so that employers cannot dominate workers), and childcare sup-
ports, alimony and no-fault divorce rights (so that husbands cannot dominate wives).
20. It goes without saying that my preferred list of essential goods is not at all meant to be taken as
objective or universal. It is simply one (contingent) assessment of what is needed and feasible
to live a good life in the context of the rich North Atlantic countries in the early 21st century.
21. This example comes from Fleurbaey (1995).
22. Knight’s critique of Anderson is powerful in this respect: ‘It is clear that “basic capabilities”
means access to food, shelter, clothing and the like. So from what Anderson says – and from
what she does not say – “fair value” for the labour of those at the bottom end of full-time
employment could amount to less than that set by current minimum wage laws in the USA and
Britain, given that these provide for basic capabilities and some nonbasic capabilities. In sum,
Anderson guarantees citizens at best the status of the lower working class and at worst the
status of the underclass’ (2005, 70). Beyond this, it is important to note that Anderson (1999)
rejects the unconditional support of a basic income, preferring a means-tested welfare system,
even though such a system is presumably less generous, and implicitly relies on deeply
troubling notions of the ‘deserving poor’ (cf. Arneson 1997; Wolff 1998).
23. Rainsborough’s original formulation from 1647 stated, ‘I think that the poorest he that is in
England hath a life to live, as the greatest he’ (Foot 2005, 28).

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