Responsibility

Chance, Merit, and Economic Inequality: Rethinking Distributive Justice and the Principle of Desert

This book develops a novel approach to distributive justice by building a theory based on a concept of desert. As a work of applied political theory, it presents a simple but powerful theoretical argument and a detailed proposal to eliminate …

Saving the American Idea: Rejecting Fear, Envy, and the Politics of Division

The American commitment to equality of opportunity, economic liberty, and upward mobility is not tried in days of prosperity. It is tested when times are tough—when fear and envy are used to divide Americans and further the interests of politicians and their cronies. In this major address at The Heritage Foundation, Congressman Paul Ryan dissects the real class warfare—a class of governing elites, exploiting the politics of division to pick winners and losers in our economy and determine our destinies for us—and outlines a principled, pro-growth alternative to this path of debt, doubt and decline.

Responsibility and Distributive Justice

Under what conditions are people responsible for their choices and the outcomes of those choices? How could such conditions be fostered by liberal societies? Should what people are due as a matter of justice depend on what they are responsible for? …

Luck Egalitarianism: Equality, Responsibility, and Justice

How should we decide which inequalities between people are justified, and which are unjustified? One answer is that such inequalities are only justified where there is a corresponding variation in responsible action or choice on the part of the …

In Defence of Luck Egalitarianism

This paper considers issues raised by Elizabeth Anderson’s recent critique of the position she terms ‘luck egalitarianism’. It is maintained that luck egalitarianism, once clarified and elaborated in certain regards, remains the strongest egalitarian …

Egalitarianism, Option Luck, and Responsibility

In this article, I defend two claims. First, I argue that differential option luck is bad from the point of view of equality. Indeed, mutatis mutandis my argument challenges the apparently commonsense view (normally accepted by both egalitarians and …