Luck and Institutions: A Defense of Institutional Luck Egalitarianism

Abstract

Luck egalitarianism is a picture of distributive equality which holds that a just distributive allocation of the goods or resources (that we take to matter) must reflect the choices of people and not their bad or good luck. Critics of luck egalitarianism have mounted powerful arguments in the form of a reductio ad absurdum against it. For example, one criticism charges that luck egalitarianism has an absurdly and untenably broad reach, such that it must be in the business of mitigating bad luck as it affects persons in all aspects of life. In response to this and other criticisms, I have proposed a restrictive view of luck egalitarianism, one of whose features is its limited institutional focus. On this institutional approach, luck egalitarianism is concerned primarily with how institutions handle good or bad luck, and not with all matters of luck per se. In this discussion, I further clarify this institutional approach to luck egalitarianism and defend its plausibility by replying to some objections.