Similarly, both Arneson and G. A. Cohen have suggested that the appro-
priate genesis can render even an extremely unequal outcome just. Thus,
Arneson writes that, ‘‘When persons enjoy equal opportunity for welfare...
any actual inequality of welfare in the positions they reach is due to factors
that lie within each individual’s control. Thus, any such inequality will be
non-problematic from the standpoint of distributive equality’’ (Arneson
1989 , 88 ). Similarly, on G. A. Cohen’s conception of egalitarian justice,
‘‘When deciding whether or not justice (as opposed to charity)
requires redistribution, the egalitarian asks if someone with a disadvantage
could have avoided it or could now overcome it. If he could have avoided it,
he has no claim to compensation, from an egalitarian point of view’’ (Cohen
1989 , 920 ).
The willingness of post-libertarians to accept that extreme inequality can
be just when cleanly generated has recently provoked a backlash against
their view, which Elizabeth Anderson has dubbed ‘‘luck egalitarianism.’’
(Anderson 1999 ; ScheZer 2003 a, 2003 b, 2005 ). 5 Although I persist in thinking
the aim of sharing in each other’s fortunes should be central to
egalitarianism, I agree with critics of luck egalitarianism in regarding the
post-libertarian attitude to voluntary inequality as implausibly permissive.
Adopting that attitude is too high a price to pay to show that egalitarianism
can withstand the agency objection. Nevertheless, as we shall now see,
problems remain in deciding which element of the post-libertarian view to
reject.
5 Although Anderson has popularized the term ‘‘luck egalitarian’’ to describe the authors men-
tioned earlier, there are at least two reasons to prefer the term ‘‘post-libertarian,’’ with its connotation
that their work is, in part, a response to libertarianism. First, the term ‘‘post-libertarian’’ captures
more eVectively the major diVerence between the views of those authors, especially Dworkin, and
their egalitarian predecessors, most importantly Rawls, namely their contrasting attitudes to our
decision-making powers over material resources, the source of the most objectionable feature of the
later authors’ view. Second, the term ‘‘luck egalitarian’’ obscures the important similarity between
Rawls and the later authors insofar as they all, on my reading, require social institutions to ensure that
we share fairly in each other’s fortune and misfortune, and so often appeal to the relative misfortune
of those less advantaged to justify describing a speciWc inequality as unjust. Those sympathetic to
Rawls’s view should note Anderson omits to mention Rawls’s frequent references to the social and
natural lottery inA Theory of Justice(Rawls 1999 a, 11 , 14 , 87 , 156 ). It is also notable that Anderson
appears to reject Rawls’s diVerence principle (Anderson 1999 , 326 ).
500 andrew williams