independent principle of desert. It is not then a notion of desert that is
relevant for justice. The laissez-faire view’s challenge of the claim that des-
ert-based justice requires the elimination of luck is, therefore, unpersuasive.
3 The Fair Opportunity View
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The conventional view about desert, luck, and justice may also be challenged
from the opposite direction from the one we have just explored: it might be
said that it allows for too great a role for luck, rather than too little. In a
nutshell, the challenge holds that it is unjust for some people to be better off or
worse off than others as a result of factors not within their control; insofar
as desert allows for some such inequalities, it should be rejected as inadequate
as a principle of justice. Defenders of the challenge just sketched, who include
so-called ‘‘luck egalitarians,’’ insist that to allow some people to claim more
than others on the basis of their performance or achievements gives some
unfair advantage over others, because it allows background luck to play a role
in how well-off they are. 4 Now, if demanding more luck neutralization than is
allowed by the conventional view of desert-based justice is incompatible with
desert, then, according to luck egalitarians, this is a reason for rejecting desert,
rather than for revising the demand for more luck neutralization.
There has been a sustained and rich discussion concerning egalitarianism’s
treatment of luck and justice over the last two decades or so, and this covers
much more ground than can be explored in what follows. The focus here is
only on whether the view that justice requires neutralization of unequal luck,
both background and performance-disrupting, is compatible with thinking
of desert as a principle of justice. In particular, the question we will address is
whether there are good reasons, which are compatible with desert, for
demanding that more luck be neutralized than is implied by the conventional
view. Is there a version of desert-based justice that accommodates the con-
tention that inequalities that reflect unequal luck, both background and
4 The label ‘‘luck egalitarians’’ is used broadly here, following Elizabeth Anderson (Anderson 1999 ),
to include all those egalitarians that think that their ideal should be responsibility-sensitive, so that
only inequalities which people are not responsible for are unjust. They include Cohen ( 1989 ),
Dworkin ( 2000 ), Arneson ( 1999 ), Rakowski ( 1991 ), and Temkin ( 1993 ).
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