{"agent_id":"dworkin","agent_name":"Ronald Dworkin","slug":"equality-of-resources","label":"Equality of resources: is the right metric of distributive justice resources or welfare, and what does Cohen's expensive-taste objection do to the resources view?","topic":"Equality of resources","question":"Is the right metric of distributive justice resources or welfare, and what does Cohen's expensive-taste objection do to the resources view?","position":"Equality of resources is the right metric of distributive justice, not equality of welfare. The argument runs through several stages. First, equality of welfare cannot handle expensive tastes: if someone cultivates a taste for claret and plovers' eggs while another is content with beer and beans, equality of welfare requires that the claret-drinker receive more resources to reach the same welfare level, which is the wrong result. Second, the apparatus of an idealized desert-island auction shows what equality of resources comes to: each person bids for the bundle of resources he prefers, and the distribution is egalitarian when it passes the *envy test* — no one would prefer to trade his bundle for anyone else's. Third, the *hypothetical insurance market* extends the apparatus to handle differences in personal endowments (talent, skill, handicap): we ask what insurance against bad endowment luck a person of average risk-aversion would have bought from behind a thin veil of ignorance, and we redistribute to approximate that insurance. Fourth, the *brute luck* and *option luck* distinction does the moral work: bad luck for which a person bears no responsibility (genetic handicap, the parents one is born to) is brute luck, and society owes compensation through the hypothetical insurance scheme; bad luck a person assumed by his own choice (gambling losses, risky career choices) is option luck, and society does not owe compensation. G. A. Cohen's expensive-taste objection — that the resources/welfare distinction does not track the responsibility line because some tastes (cultivated identifications, religious commitments) are not chosen — names a real difficulty, but the response in *Sovereign Virtue* and the Burley reply (2007) is that responsibility runs through *endorsement* rather than choice: a person is responsible for the tastes she now endorses, even if she did not choose them, and the resources framework remains correct.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"Equality of resources is the right metric of distributive justice, not equality of welfare.","n":[1,2]},{"t":"The argument runs through several stages.","n":[]},{"t":"First, equality of welfare cannot handle expensive tastes: if someone cultivates a taste for claret and plovers' eggs while another is content with beer and beans, equality of welfare requires that the claret-drinker receive more resources to reach the same welfare level, which is the wrong result.","n":[3,4]}],[{"t":"Second, the apparatus of an idealized desert-island auction shows what equality of resources comes to: each person bids for the bundle of resources he prefers, and the distribution is egalitarian when it passes the *envy test* — no one would prefer to trade his bundle for anyone else's.","n":[]},{"t":"Third, the *hypothetical insurance market* extends the apparatus to handle differences in personal endowments (talent, skill, handicap): we ask what insurance against bad endowment luck a person of average risk-aversion would have bought from behind a thin veil of ignorance, and we redistribute to approximate that insurance.","n":[]}],[{"t":"Fourth, the *brute luck* and *option luck* distinction does the moral work: bad luck for which a person bears no responsibility (genetic handicap, the parents one is born to) is brute luck, and society owes compensation through the hypothetical insurance scheme; bad luck a person assumed by his own choice (gambling losses, risky career choices) is option luck, and society does not owe compensation.","n":[]}],[{"t":"G.","n":[]},{"t":"A.","n":[]},{"t":"Cohen's expensive-taste objection — that the resources/welfare distinction does not track the responsibility line because some tastes (cultivated identifications, religious commitments) are not chosen — names a real difficulty, but the response in *Sovereign Virtue* and the Burley reply (2007) is that responsibility runs through *endorsement* rather than choice: a person is responsible for the tastes she now endorses, even if she did not choose them, and the resources framework remains correct.","n":[5]}]],"texts":"*Sovereign Virtue: The Theory and Practice of Equality* (Harvard, 2000) Chs. 1-3 (the two foundational 1981 *Philosophy & Public Affairs* essays on equality of welfare and equality of resources), Chs. 4-7 (extensions); the desert-island auction thought experiment; the hypothetical insurance market; the envy test; the *brute luck* and *option luck* distinction; *Justice for Hedgehogs* (Belknap Harvard, 2011) Chs. 16-19 on equality. Reception: G. A. Cohen, 'On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice' (*Ethics* 1989) — the canonical expensive-taste objection; Cohen's 'Expensive Taste Rides Again' in *Dworkin and His Critics* (Blackwell, 2007) Ch. 1; Philippe Van Parijs, *Real Freedom for All* (Oxford, 1995) and 'Equality of Resources Versus Undominated Diversity' in *Dworkin and His Critics* Ch. 3; Richard Arneson, 'Equality and Equal Opportunity for Welfare' (*Philosophical Studies* 1989) on luck egalitarianism; Michael Otsuka, *Libertarianism Without Inequality* (Oxford, 2003) and Ch. 4 in Burley; Elizabeth Anderson, 'What Is the Point of Equality?' (*Ethics* 1999) on luck egalitarianism's pity-and-resentment problem; Amartya Sen, *Inequality Reexamined* (Oxford, 1992) on the capability approach; John Rawls, *A Theory of Justice* (Harvard, 1971) on primary goods.","works":["*Sovereign Virtue: The Theory and Practice of Equality* (Harvard, 2000) Chs. 1-3 (the two foundational 1981 *Philosophy & Public Affairs* essays on equality of welfare and equality of resources), Chs. 4-7 (extensions)","the desert-island auction thought experiment","the hypothetical insurance market","the envy test","the *brute luck* and *option luck* distinction","*Justice for Hedgehogs* (Belknap Harvard, 2011) Chs. 16-19 on equality"],"reception":"G. A. Cohen, 'On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice' (*Ethics* 1989) — the canonical expensive-taste objection; Cohen's 'Expensive Taste Rides Again' in *Dworkin and His Critics* (Blackwell, 2007) Ch. 1; Philippe Van Parijs, *Real Freedom for All* (Oxford, 1995) and 'Equality of Resources Versus Undominated Diversity' in *Dworkin and His Critics* Ch. 3; Richard Arneson, 'Equality and Equal Opportunity for Welfare' (*Philosophical Studies* 1989) on luck egalitarianism; Michael Otsuka, *Libertarianism Without Inequality* (Oxford, 2003) and Ch. 4 in Burley; Elizabeth Anderson, 'What Is the Point of Equality?' (*Ethics* 1999) on luck egalitarianism's pity-and-resentment problem; Amartya Sen, *Inequality Reexamined* (Oxford, 1992) on the capability approach; John Rawls, *A Theory of Justice* (Harvard, 1971) on primary goods.","status":"Equality of resources is one of two major contemporary egalitarian metrics, with G. A. Cohen's *access to advantage* / *midfare* and Richard Arneson's *equal opportunity for welfare* as the principal alternatives within luck egalitarianism, and Amartya Sen's *capability approach* as the alternative metric from outside the luck-egalitarian framework. The Burley volume (Chs. 1-5) contains the most sustained recent engagement: Cohen's 'Expensive Taste Rides Again,' Christofidis on talent and slavery and envy, Van Parijs on undominated diversity, Otsuka on liberty and abstraction, Arneson on the foundations of liberal equality. Elizabeth Anderson's 1999 *Ethics* article 'What Is the Point of Equality?' argues that luck egalitarianism gets its motivation wrong (pity and resentment rather than the relational equality of free citizens); the response in *Justice for Hedgehogs* Ch. 16 treats Anderson's challenge as a misreading of what the luck-egalitarian project is doing. The family disagreement among luck egalitarians (Dworkin, Cohen, Arneson, Otsuka, Van Parijs, Casal, Williams) is one of the most productive ongoing debates in contemporary political philosophy.","era":"1931-2013","discipline":"Philosophy","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"Replies to Critics in Burley","page":"p. 10","canonical":"","quote":"He therefore needs some argument why relative success is nevertheless the right metric of distributive justice; why justice demands transfers in the name of welfare equality when those who gain think they are already overall better off than those who lose. His difficulty underscores the danger in his initial assumption that he can defend equality welfare without confronting the question of what welfare is.","label":"Replies to Critics in Burley, p. 10"},{"n":2,"work":"Replies to Critics in Burley","page":"p. 13","canonical":"","quote":"Indeed, I argued that equality of resources is to be preferred to other theories of distributive justice because it better fits a more attractive account of what well-being really is. In particular I emphasized, in my original account of the crucial phenomenon of insurance, that people buy insurance not to improve their resources but to improve their welfare.","label":"Replies to Critics in Burley, p. 13"},{"n":3,"work":"Sovereign Virtue - The Theory and Practice of Equality","page":"p. 84","canonical":"","quote":"The information left to an independent political level under equality of welfare is therefore brought to the initial level of individual choice under equality of resources. The elements of luck in the auction just described are in fact pieces of information of a crucial sort; information that is acquired and used in that process of choice.","label":"Sovereign Virtue - The Theory and Practice of Equality, p. 84"},{"n":4,"work":"Sovereign Virtue - The Theory and Practice of Equality","page":"p. 83","canonical":"","quote":"Equality of resources, however, offers no similar reason for correcting for the contingencies that determine how expensive or frustrating someone's preferences turn out to be. Under equality of welfare, people are meant to decide what sorts of lives they want independently of information relevant to determining how much their choices will reduce or enhance the ability of others to have what they want.","label":"Sovereign Virtue - The Theory and Practice of Equality, p. 83"},{"n":5,"work":"Sovereign Virtue - The Theory and Practice of Equality","page":"pp. 311–312","canonical":"","quote":"We would need to assume many more facts than Cohen provides to decide whether gloomy people or people who need heavier sweaters would have wished to secure insurance against these misfortunes at the premium that such insurance would cost.","label":"Sovereign Virtue - The Theory and Practice of Equality, pp. 311–312"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"law-as-integrity","label":"Law as integrity: do judges in hard cases find the right answer by interpreting legal practice in its best light, or do they make discretionary choices the way Hart's positivism describes?"},{"slug":"rights-as-trumps","label":"Rights as trumps: do individuals hold rights against the collective that cannot be defeated by appeals to aggregate welfare, or are rights themselves derivable from utility calculations?"},{"slug":"the-moral-reading-of-the-constitution","label":"The moral reading of the Constitution: do judges have the duty to give the abstract clauses their best moral interpretation, or should they decline that responsibility through originalism or minimalism?"},{"slug":"the-hedgehog-thesis","label":"The hedgehog thesis: is there a unity of value across ethics, morality, political philosophy, and law, or are these separate domains with potentially incommensurable claims?"}]}