economists term the ‘‘envy test’’ (Dworkin 2000 , 67 ). 3 Thus, they should
ensure that nobody prefers anyone else’s resources, and that each individual
plays an equal role in determining the character of the resource bundles
available for distribution. Dworkin then argues that a market is the best
device to eliminate envy in this way. More speciWcally, he describes an auction
in which everyone has the same bidding power, and an auctioneer continu-
ously divides lots until the market clears and no bidder wishes to repeat the
process. Dworkin then asks whether a market procedure remains appropriate
once production, investment, and trade complicate the island’s economy, and
diVerences in luck as well as ambition shape the islanders’ prospects.
Here Dworkin draws an important distinction between an individual’s
luck in the decisions she makes, and in the conditions sheWnds herself in
regardless of her decisions. As he explains these two types of luck, ‘‘Option
luck is a matter of how deliberate and calculated gambles turn out— whether
someone gains or loses through accepting an isolated risk he or she should
have anticipated and might have declined. Brute luck is a matter of how risks
fall out that are not in that sense deliberate gambles’’ (Dworkin 2000 , 73 ).
Where everyone has the same brute luck, and there is no variation in
productive talent and other natural abilities, Dworkin argues that equality
of resources entitles individuals to make productive use of their resources,
and keep the proceeds. Dworkin also argues that individuals are entitled to
use their resources in ways that expose them to diVering degrees of option
luck. Thus, he concludes that if some islanders choose to gamble with their
endowment, and have good option luck, then there is no reason to object to
their having more resources than similarly situated islanders who declined to
gamble, or who chose to gamble and had worse option luck.
Once Dworkin’s simplifying assumption about the absence of diVerential
brute luck is relaxed, his conclusions about the fairness of option luck
inequalities play a crucial role in equality of resources. To understand why,
suppose that some individuals are sighted whilst others become blind (Dwor-
kin 2000 , 76 ), or that Adrian has a higher income than his similarly motivated
counterpart Claude simply because he is more naturally gifted (Dworkin
2000 , 83 ). To deal with such inequalities in fortune, Dworkin appeals to the
idea of a hypothetical insurance market, where purchasers make
decisions based on their own attitude to risk, but—unlike in actual insurance
3 It is notable that the economist Hal Varian ( 1975 ) highlighted the possibility of replying to Nozick
by appealing to the idea of an envy-free competitive equilibrium some time before Dworkin presented
equality of resources (Dworkin 1981 b).
496 andrew williams