Luck, equality and responsibility

Abstract

Egalitarians claim that inequality in society is only justified to the extent that it results from choices freely and responsibly made. Inequality resulting from brute bad luck is not justified. I argue that luck, and therefore responsibility, are defined in terms of the reward structure. Luck and responsibility are epiphenomena of the incentives that people have to choose from the opportunity sets available. To that end egalitarians should look more directly at the degree of inequality that is acceptable and examine more closely the classes of actions they want to leave to individual responsibility even though these will lead to greater inequality. State action should concentrate upon reducing inequality between classes of people; it cannot be expected to reduce all inequalities between people even though many of these will have only peripheral relationships to responsibility.