Criticism of Theory
The position is controversial within some currents of egalitarian thought, and the philosopher Elizabeth S. Anderson has been a vocal critic of it — on the ground that, amongst other things, the fact that something is chosen does not necessarily make it acceptable. An example of this would be a robber offering someone a choice between their money and their life. She also claims that luck egalitarianism expresses a demeaning pity towards the disadvantaged. Neither of these criticisms is accepted by luck egalitarianism's proponents.
Susan Hurley has argued that any attempt to ground egalitarianism in issues concerning luck and responsibility must fail, because there is no non-circular way of specifying an egalitarian baseline rather than any other baseline. For instance, a luck inegalitarian could believe that the baseline from which we should correct luck is one where huge inequalities exist. Without merely assuming equality, there seems to be no way of coming to prefer one approach over the other.
Read more about this topic: Luck Egalitarianism
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