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What Is Luck Egalitarianism, And Does It Constitute A Plausible Theory Of Justice? In Your Response, You Must Make Reference To Elizabeth Anderson’s ‘What Is The Point Of Equality?’.
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Luck egalitarianism represents a group of egalitarianism theories of distributive justice. Primarily, it aims at counteracting the distributive effects of luck. Originally, luck egalitarianism deals with the distribution of justice within a society (Nozick, 1974). It argues that luck (despite being good or bad) remains a reality of human life, which cannot be ignored. However, if all or any of these realities grounded in luck begin to negatively affect the prospects and interests of a person’s life then such realities start mattering for the justice system of a society. And, in this regard, it becomes the duty of the justice system to nullify or at least neutralize the affects of such bad luck.
The core idea of luck egalitarianism lies in the notion that each individual of a society must take responsibility for their actions or choices, and assume the costs of making such choices or taking such decisions. Only in this condition, the idea of moral equality of individuals would ably be prevailed within a society. On the other side of discussion, it supports the notion that any person born with bad luck must not be worse off just because of it. For some of the researchers and authors, including Anderson (1999) and Cohen (1983), the primary purpose of this distributive principle is to counter the negative effects of luck on the opportunity for wellbeing of a person. Nevertheless, for other authors and researchers such as Dworkin (2000), the objective of distributive justice is to nullify or at least mitigate the effects of luck on the social distribution of goods and resources among the individuals.
However, with the development in the past literature over the past few decades, it has become clear that the intuitive idea behind this idea lies in the demand or desire that no person is differentiated in the society on the grounds of good or bad luck. This conclusion is also exhib9ted in the past literature on luck egalitarianism. The researchers and authors had been working on, and had performed varying attempts on designing distributive principles, which are appropriately sensitive to the considerations of luck and responsibility. However, the advocates of welfare-based principle argue that the material goods and services have no intrinsic value. They further argue that such material goods and services remain valuable as long as they keep adding to activities aimed at increasing profitability.
For these reasons, advocates of welfare-based principles argue that justice distributive principles must be inclusive of material goods and services. The luck egalitarianism or liberalization principle, on the other end of discussion, contrast with each other. It, therefore, generally criticizes any idea of justice distribution requiring the pursuit of specific pattern. A few examples of such an idea include equality or maximization of welfare or of material goods and services. They further argue that some of the pattern pursuit highly conflicts with more important oral demands of self-ownership or liberty. Hence, although luck egalitarianism comes in different forms but the central idea of all of these ideas remains the same. Putting it in words, the core idea of the notion is that equalities that many authors and researchers believe that the particular principles must be advocated and defended on their particular project. In this regard, the authors can justify issue by putting pressure on the idea that she has an aim to understand the hidden and real meaning of the theory.
Distributive justice emphasizes the difference between the theories. For this reason, it also ably provides an avenue for the persons having interest in ignoring the principles of justice in the society. Additionally, most of the people, as a member of the same society, tend to compensate people for having brute, bad luck. In this regard, however, they have wrongfully assumed that the justice is all about this, and nothing exists outside the boundary of this narrow circle. Recently, some of the authors and researchers have heavily criticized. Firstly, they have been criticized for leaving out of the picture one of the most non-distributive egalitarian concerns. Secondly, they have been argued for as being a complete misconstrual of egalitarian justice.
Anderson Elizabeth, strongly argued that egalitarianism believes in people living together within a community. The communities are being governed by principles that express the notion that all citizens deserve equal respect and concern of the society. Furthermore, in the same vein. Anderson has also made the most radical claim that egalitarians have no non-instrumental concerns about the distribution of justice. Based on this claim, Anderson has further elaborated on the fact that egalitarians have no direct but indirect concern in this context. Also, their concern must stand equal for being a member of the society. However, such an idea cannot be obtained and practiced over one night. For this reason, redistribution of wealth, income, etc. would be required for such large scale egalitarianism. Moreover, it does not require elimination of differential brute luck. The only requirement of egalitarianism, as Anderson puts it, is to create and maintain ability of each member of the society to function as equal human being.
Anderson (1999) explains that if the conservative secretly peened the recent work that defends equality, the results could not be much hopeful. She points out to the fact that the serious mistake that these egalitarians, who assume equality as a compensation for bad luck, make is to imagine equality as a solution to the problem of bad luck of individuals. They further believe that equality prevails within a society when no one suffers of a deficiency that has not been created by them. Therefore, it can be argued that egalitarians see the quest for equality as a species of litigation or insurance adjustment. However, the proper goal of equality is to differentiate between preventable or foreseeable adversaries and uncontrollable misfortunes. Additionally, it must also examine the damages the adversaries have caused, and how to best compensate these damages.
Luck egalitarian question that if this situation is correct. Firstly, they must all argue in the very same manner as Anderson has described it. The members of a society do this because they believe that social standing must be seen as a tangible good, which should be distributed equally among all of the people. However, this can be obtained only after setting aside the considerations about responsibility. If such a thing prevails, there would remain very less between Anderson’s concerns and luck egalitarianism. The latter asks that why do humans owe to each other, and the former asks that what constitutes a fair distribution. These are two different questions primarily due to the fact that distribution is a complex notion, which becomes unfair even when all members of a society have done what they owed to others. For instance, within a community, some of the people die young while others die old, and on one can do anything to prevent it.
Secondly, supposedly said, the available resources are so optimally distributed among the society in a manner that effective and efficient functioning in political decision making and within a civil society is assured (Kymlicka, 2002). Again, supposedly saying, if one has a choice between two distributions, i.e., one that benefits the ones with worse off with regard to how well their lives are being spent, and the other that benefits those who are already going through the best phase of how their life is being spent. For this reason, both of these distributions are equally good on the account of Anderson despite the fact that many see it as an inappropriate and unhealthy approach implication of her view. Although the problem becomes less of a headache if the threshold of equal financing remains very high.
However, with such high thresholds, another problems surfaces with much more seriousness than before. If people must be assured of equal functioning at such a high level despite the fact that they act foolishly in keeping up with their responsibilities, the cost of their choices must not be imposed on them. It becomes unfair to them. Anderson has also provided an answer to this serious problem, i.e., democratic equality fails to introduce any good change and ascribes on hope on the fact that luck can be neglected by responsibility.
Overall, based on the discussion developed above, it can be concluded that luck egalitarianism is not a plausible theory of justice primarily due to the fact that human life constitutes of a jumble of lotteries; it is a particular way of looking at the world. This view of seeing the world is far more attractive and successful than the philosophy of luck egalitarianism. Therefore, the world view is a problem here. The assumption that luck is a powerful tool in the context of social sorting.
References
Anderson, E. 1999. What Is the Point of Equality? Ethics, 109, 287-337.
Cohen, G.A. 1983. The Structure of Proletarian Unfreedom. Philosophy and Public Affairs, 12, 3-33.
Dworkin, R. 2000. Sovereign Virtue, Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press. Chapter 2 (Excerpt).
Kymlicka, Chapter 3: Liberal Equality, pages 70-101.
Kymlicka, Chapter 3: Liberal Equality, to page 70 only.
Kymlicka, Chapter 4: Libertarianism, pages 102-127.
Kymlicka, Chapter 5: Marxism.
Kymlicka, W. 2002. Contemporary Political Philosophy: An Introduction (Second Edition), Oxford, UK, Oxford University Press. Chapters 1 & 2: Introduction, and Utilitarianism.
Nozick, R. 1974. Anarchy, State, and Utopia, USA, Basic Books. Chapter 7 (Excerpt).
Pogge, T. 2008. World Poverty and Human Rights (Second Edition), Malden, MA, Polity Press. Pages 97-123.
Rawls, J. 1999. A Theory of Justice (Revised Edition), Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press. Sections 1-5, 11-13, & 24-26.
Singer, P. 1972. Famine, Affluence, and Morality. Philosophy and Public Affairs, 1, 229-243.
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