Is the negligence standard in accident law acceptable to the egalitarian? The egalitarian - the egalitarian who would compensate only losses for which the actor was not responsible - cannot accept either a system of strict liability for all accidents or a system of social insurance for all accidents. A system of tort law acceptable to the responsibility - egalitarian must be a system based on negligence. But what will negligence mean? A negligence system in which the notion of reasonableness (...) is based on efficiency, I argue, is a system that redistributes wealth from the less well off to those better off. I consider alternative notions of reasonableness, ending up with a principle of proportional responsibility and distinguishing between commercial and non-commercial cases. (shrink)

Journal of Political Philosophy, EarlyView.

Journal of Political Philosophy, EarlyView.

Consider the following argument for school choice, based on an appeal to the virtues of the market: allowing parents some measure of choice over their particular children's education ultimately serves the interests of all children, because creating a market mechanism in state education will produce improvements through the same pressures that lead to greater efficiency and quality when markets are deployed in more familiar contexts. The argument fails, because it is committed to a principle of equal concern, which implies that (...) a market in education is acceptable only if it is right to hold children disadvantaged by their parents' poor market choices substantively responsible for the fact. Since that claim is untenable, the market‐based argument for school choice not only fails, but also turns out to rely on principles which in fact condemn the very policy it was supposed to support. (shrink)

What level of government subsidy of higher education is justified, in what form, and for what reasons? We answer these questions by applying the hypothetical insurance approach, originally developed by Ronald Dworkin in his work on distributive justice. On this approach, when asking how to fund and deliver public services in a particular domain, we should seek to model what would be the outcome of a hypothetical insurance market: we stipulate that participants lack knowledge about their specific resources and risks, (...) and ask what insurance contracts they would take out to secure different types of benefit and protection in the domain in question. The great benefit of the hypothetical insurance approach is that it allows us to take apparently intractable questions about interpersonal distribution and transform them into questions about intrapersonal distributions: that is, questions about how an individual would choose to distribute risks and resources across the various lives that they might end up living, in light of their individual ambitions and preferences. Applying this approach to higher education, we argue that the UK model of higher education funding in which the costs of an individual's higher education are shared between general taxation and the individual herself, with the latter element to be paid retrospectively through an income-contingent state-backed loan, is vindicated as just. In particular, we argue that it is more just than alternatives such as a graduate tax, full funding through general taxation, and full privatisation. (shrink)

A survey of recent work on egalitarianism.

The ‘global justice gap’ refers to the state of affairs in which the just entitlements of the global poor do not correlate with the justly enforceable duties of the global rich. The possibility of a global justice gap is controversial, because it is widely thought that claims of justice cannot exist unless they are matched up with corresponding duties. In this essay, I refute this sceptical view by showing that the global justice gap is indeed a theoretical possibility. My strategy (...) is to argue for a particular way of understanding the concept of distributive justice which I call the ‘dual-component model of justice’. On this view, distributive justice is a single value with two distinct components: (1) a fairness component, which specifies the situation that people would be in if they lived under conditions of what I call ‘basic distributive fairness’, and (2) a legitimacy component, specifying the rights that people have according to what I call the ‘principles of justified coercion’, which limit the ways in which they may permissibly be coerced. The global justice gap arises when the two components of justice are not in alignment. This happens when, although it is within the collective capacity of the members of the developed world to bring the global distribution much closer to the ideal of basic distributive fairness, there are considerations that make it unjust to coerce them into exercising this capacity. (shrink)

Education has enormous influence on individual prospects for a flourishing life, thus, the justice of an education system is a key indicator of the justice in a society. Normally, the debate over educational justice refers to two fundamental questions: the conception of justice and the aims and purposes of education. We may agree about the meaning of justice, but disagree about the aim of education, and vice versa, and thus come to very different perspective about what educational policies should entail. (...) However, what does justice look like when it comes to the distribution of educational goods? Should we ensure that all children have equal educational resources and opportunities or should we rather concentrate on equal educational attachment? Recently, there is a debate on educational justice which mainly focuses on the status and role of comparatively considerations within a just distribution of educational benefits. According to the adequacy approach, the state is required to ensure all children have enough or adequate education. Once the adequate threshold of educational resources is obtained, there is no injustice in the fact that some children have better education than others. In contrast with adequacy approach, proponents of what can be called educational equality approach have instead argued that justice requires prospects for educational achievement to be dependent upon a child’s ability and willingness to learn, and not on factors outside of her control. Therefore, the state is required to ensure that an individual’s prospects for educational achievement should be a function only of that individual’s effort and talent, not of his or her social class background or other factors outside of her control. It seems that the debate between proponents of adequacy and proponents of equality in educational opportunity reflects very different ways to think about just educational policy and practice. This paper is trying to address this debate. It proceeds as follows. In the next section, I will outline the Equality vs. Adequacy debate. Then, in section III, I would like to take issue with these approaches. I will argue that both approaches have negative effects on equality and justice in education. Finally, inspired by Harvard political philosopher Danielle Allen’s work on education and equality, I will propose an alternative conception of educational equality. I believe it is a better way of understanding the meaning of educational justice for a democratic society. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence tools used in employment decision-making cut across the multiple stages of job advertisements, shortlisting, interviews and hiring, and actual and potential bias can arise in each of these stages. One major challenge is to mitigate AI bias and promote fairness in opaque AI systems. This paper argues that the equal opportunity merit principle is an ethical approach for fair AI employment decision-making. Further, explainable AI can mitigate the opacity problem by placing greater emphasis on enhancing the understanding of (...) reasonable users and affected persons as to the AI output. Both the equal opportunity merit principle and explainable AI should be integrated in the design and implementation of AI employment decision-making systems so as to ensure, as far as possible, that the AI output is arrived at through a fair process. (shrink)

Individuals who become ill as a result of personal lifestyle choices often shift the monetary costs of their healthcare needs to the taxpaying public or to fellow members of a private insurance pool. Some argue that policies permitting such cost shifting are unfair. Arguments for this view may seem to draw support from luck egalitarian accounts of distributive justice. This essay argues that the luck egalitarian framework provides no such support. To allocate healthcare costs on the basis of personal responsibility (...) would arbitrarily and publicly burden socially detectable risk-takers while undetectable risk-takers continue to get a free ride. That problem is unavoidable even on the assumption that distributive institutions outside the healthcare sector are fully just. In actual, farfrom-just societies, imposing personal liability for the costs of voluntary risk taking would be wrong for an additional reason. Doing so would tend to magnify existing distributive injustices. These conclusions draw attention to two common ‘moral fallacies of the second best’ that can arise when applying ideal normative theory to matters of institutional design and in real-world policy contexts. (shrink)

Are there any conditions under which to justify deliberately hiding or manipulating the expression of our opinions, emotions or character traits in front of others? this article examines David Hume’s answer to this question by discussing the practices that he calls good manners and impudence. the conclusion is that Hume’s description of the moral point of view allows for two conditions under which practices of opacity such as good manners and impudence can be morally assessed.

For two decades, egalitarian analytical philosophers have sought to identify the metric to be employed in order to ascertain whether any distribution is equal or not. This essay provides a review of the seminal contributions to this debate by Amartya Sen, Ronald Dworkin, Richard Arneson and G.A. Cohen.

In what sense are persons equal, such that it is appropriate to treat them as equals? This difficult question has been strangely neglected by political philosophers. A plausible answer can be found by adopting a particular interpretation of the idea of respect. Central to this interpretation is the thought that in order to respect persons we need to treat them as ‘opaque', paying attention only to their outward features as agents. This proposed basis of equality has important implications for the (...) currency of egalitarian justice, ruling out a number of the equalizanda favored by contemporary egalitarians. (shrink)

According to the ‘starting-gate’ interpretation of equality of opportunity, individuals who enjoy equal starts can legitimately become unequal to the extent that their differences derive from choices for which they can be held responsible. There can be no coercive transfers of resources in favour of individuals who disregarded their own futures, and no limits on the right of an individual to distribute resources intrapersonally. This paper assesses two ways in which advocates of equality of opportunity might depart from the starting-gate (...) interpretation. The first involves limiting the degree to which people are liable to pay the costs of their past choices. The second involves limiting their initial opportunities so as to prevent certain risky or apparently short-sighted choices. The paper compares these alternatives in terms of their compatibility with a particular conception of persons as morally equal and temporally extended. It constructs this conception by combining reductionist premises about personal identity with the premise that our status as equals is based on the fundamental requirement of opacity respect. Two conclusions about equality of opportunity are shown to follow from this conception of persons as morally equal and temporally extended: the first is that an individual’s liability to pay the costs of her past choices does not diminish over time; the second is that the individual’s initial scope of choice, in bringing about intrapersonal distributions between her current and future selves, can nevertheless be permissibly limited. The two conclusions are consistent, and the second allows for departures from starting-gate equality of opportunity. (shrink)

The objective of this article is to explore people’s attitudes toward responsibility in the allocation of public health care resources. Special attention is paid to conceptualizations of responsibility involving blame and sanctions. A representative sample of the Norwegian population was asked about various responsibility mechanisms that have been proposed in the theoretical literature on health care and personal responsibility, from denial of treatment to a tax on unhealthy consumer goods. Survey experiments were employed to study treatment effects, such as whether (...) fairness considerations affect attitudes about responsibility. We find that, overall, a substantial minority of the respondents find it fair to let the health care system sanction people—in one way or another—for voluntary behaviors that increase the risk of becoming ill. Quite surprisingly, we find that people are more prone to report that they should themselves be held responsible for unhealthy lifestyles than others. (shrink)

Genomics provides information on genetic susceptibility to diseases and new possibilities for interventions which can fundamentally alter the design of fair health policies. The aim of this paper is to explore implications of genomics from the perspective of equal opportunity ethics. The ideal of equal opportunity requires that individuals are held responsible for some, but not all, factors that affect their health. Informational problems, however, often make it difficult to implement the ideal of equal opportunity in the context of healthcare. (...) In this paper, examples are considered of how new genetic information may affect the way individual responsibility for choice is assigned. It is also argued that genomics may result in relocation of the responsibility cut by providing both new information and new technology. Finally, how genomics may affect healthcare policies and the market for health insurance is discussed. (shrink)

A liberal egalitarian theory of justice seeks to combine the values of equality, personal freedom, and personal responsibility. It is considered a much more promising position than strict egalitarianism, because it supposedly provides a fairness argument for inequalities reflecting differences in choice. However, we show that it is inherently difficult to fulfill this ambition. We present a liberal egalitarian paradox which shows that there does not exist any robust reward system that satisfies a minimal egalitarian and a minimal liberal requirement. (...) Moreover, we demonstrate how libertarianism may be justified in this framework if we drop the egalitarian condition. (shrink)

Harry Brighouse discusses two conceptions of educational equality. The first is a type of equality of opportunity, heavily influenced by the work of John Rawls, which he calls the meritocratic conception. According to this conception, an individual’s educational prospects should not be influenced by factors such as their social class background. The other, radical conception, suggests a person’s natural talents should not influence their educational prospects either. Brighouse favors the meritocratic conception, but this article argues that it is flawed and (...) that the radical conception ought to be preferred. Although a superior conception of educational equality, the radical conception is still not quite right, so this article develops a luck egalitarian conception of educational equality. It is argued that this conception reflects much current thinking about equality and avoids some of the difficulties with Brighouse’s two conceptions. Finally, two objections to a luck egalitarian conception are considered. (shrink)

Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century is best known for its documentation of increasing social inequality, but it also has a notable normative aspect. Although Piketty is far less clear on the normative level than on the empirical, his view of justice can be summarised as meritocratic luck egalitarianism. This leads him to condemn as unjust the fact that inheritance is once again becoming more important than education for determining social position. In this paper, I discuss whether Piketty's normative (...) conception can justify this condemnation. My main thesis will be that Piketty ends up in a dilemma that he cannot resolve with the normative resources he has at his disposal. The horns of this dilemma are defined by whether or not we accept what Susan Hurley calls ‘the regression requirement’, and in both cases the normative distinction between inheritance and education as ways to achieve social positions disappears. Toward the end, I shall suggest an alternative justification for the moral superiority of education over inheritance, which makes use of one of Piketty's key empirical arguments. (shrink)

This paper examines whether an agent becomes liable to defensive harm by engaging in a morally permissible but foreseeably risk-imposing activity that subsequently threatens objectively unjustified harm. It first clarifies the notion of a foreseeably risk-imposing activity by proposing that an activity should count as foreseeably risk-imposing if an agent may morally permissibly perform it only if she abides by certain duties of care. Those who argue that engaging in such an activity can render an agent liable to defensive harm (...) ground this liability in the luck egalitarian thought that we may justly hold individuals responsible for the consequences of their voluntary choices. Against this, I argue that a luck egalitarian commitment to holding people responsible cannot, by itself, ground liability to defensive harm. It can help ground such liability only against the backdrop of a distributively just society, and only if further considerations speak morally in favour of attaching certain well-defined costs to individuals’ risk-imposing choices. I conclude by suggesting that if an account of liability applies robustly across distributively just and unjust contexts alike, then what grounds an agent’s liability is plausibly not her responsibility for threatening objectively unjustified harm, but her culpability for doing so. (shrink)

Policy debates surrounding poverty and inequality often focus on practical solutions and seldom explore the normative underpinning that would justify our concerns with these phenomena. Why should we care about poverty, or about inequality? From a philosophical standpoint, can we separate the two, such that it is possible to be deeply concerned about poverty but unconcerned about inequalities? Do our reasons for caring about one contrast with our reasons for caring about the other? While there is a growing empirical literature (...) exploring the mechanisms connecting the two, the philosophical literature has seldom focused on their relationship. Firstly, this paper provides a clear map of the philosophical debate, clarifying the normative assumptions that underlie positions conceptually prioritizing inequality and poverty respectively. Secondly, the paper suggests ‘a pluralist approach’, that stresses the overlap of our normative concerns with poverty and inequality and highlights parallel problems that restrictive interpretations of these concepts face, pointing to the importance of considering broader phenomena and processes (such as deprivation and exclusion) that illuminate the relationship between the two. (shrink)

Policy debates surrounding poverty and inequality often focus on practical solutions and seldom explore the normative underpinning that would justify our concerns with these phenomena. Why should we care about poverty, or about inequality? From a philosophical standpoint, can we separate the two, such that it is possible to be deeply concerned about poverty but unconcerned about inequalities? Do our reasons for caring about one contrast with our reasons for caring about the other? While there is a growing empirical literature (...) exploring the mechanisms connecting the two, the philosophical literature has seldom focused on their relationship. Firstly, this paper provides a clear map of the philosophical debate, clarifying the normative assumptions that underlie positions conceptually prioritizing inequality and poverty respectively. Secondly, the paper suggests ‘a pluralist approach’, that stresses the overlap of our normative concerns with poverty and inequality and highlights parallel problems that restrictive interpretations of these concepts face, pointing to the importance of considering broader phenomena and processes (such as deprivation and exclusion) that illuminate the relationship between the two. (shrink)

Many philosophers believe that luck egalitarianism captures “desert-like” intuitions about justice. Some even think that luck egalitariansm distributes goods in accordance with desert. In this paper, we argue that this is wrong. Desertism conflicts with luck egalitarianism in three important contexts, and, in these contexts, desertism renders the proper moral judgment. First, compared to desertism, luck egalitarianism is sometimes too stingy: it fails to justly compensate people for their socially valuable contributions—when those contributions arose from “option luck”. Second, luck egalitarianism (...) is sometimes too restrictive: it fails to justly compensate people who make a social contribution when that contribution arose from “brute luck”. Third, luck egalitarianism is too limited in scope: it cannot diagnose economic injustice arising independently of comparative levels of justice. The lesson of this paper is that luck egalitarians should consider supplementing their theory with desert considerations. Or, even better, consider desertism as a superior alternative to their theory. (shrink)

Fairness in sport is not just about assigning the top prizes to the worthiest competitors. It is also about the way the prize structure itself is organised. For many sporting competitions, although it may be acceptable for winners to receive more than losers, it can seem unfair for winners to take everything and for losers to get nothing. Yet this insight leaves unanswered some difficult questions about what stakes fairness requires and which principles of stakes fairness are appropriate for particular (...) competitions. In this article I specify a range of different principles of stakes fairness that could regulate sporting competitions. I also put forward a theoretical method for pairing up appropriate principles of stakes fairness with given sporting competitions. Specifically, I argue that the underlying rationales for holding sporting competitions can provide useful guides for identifying appropriate principles of stakes fairness. I then seek to clarify and work through some of the implications of this method for a sample of real world controversies over sporting prize structures. I also attempt to refine the method in response to two possible objections from indeterminacy and relativism. Finally, I compare and contrast my conclusions with more general philosophical debates about justice. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Individual responsibility is now very much on the political agenda. Even those who believe that its importance has been exaggerated by the political right — either because the appropriate conditions for assigning responsibility to individuals are rarely satisfied or because not enough is done to protect individuals from the more harmful consequences of their past choices and gambles — accept that individual responsibility is at least one of the values against which a society and its institutions ought to be (...) evaluated. One might be forgiven for assuming, then, that we know exactly why individual responsibility is important. The truth is otherwise. Surprisingly little philosophical work has been undertaken to analyse and separate out the different rationales that might be in play. Several possible reasons are examined here including: utility, the social bases of self‐respect, autonomy, human flourishing and fairness. However, once we adopt a pluralistic view of the value of individual responsibility we open up the possibility of value conflict, which conflict can make it harder to arrive at definitive prescriptions about which social policies best advance our concerns for individual responsibility. It is nevertheless possible to draw at least some conclusions about which policies we should favour. One important conclusion is that sometimes it is better not to hold individuals responsible for their past choices by denying them aid now, so that they might be better able to assume individual responsibility at a later date. (shrink)

It is sometimes said that a society should be judged ethically by how it treats its least-fortunate or worst-off members. In one interpretation this is not a point about justice, but instead about moral virtues such as compassion and charity. In our response to the least fortunate among us, we display, or show that we lack, fundamental moral virtues of fellow feeling and concern for others in need. In a different interpretation, however, this point is about justice and a just (...) society—the justice of a society is shown especially in how it treats its least-fortunate members. (shrink)

This paper examines the moral case for a right to religious accommodation, which requires that religious conduct be free of any serious burdens placed on it by the state. Two different types of normative argument for this right are outlined and rejected. The first appeals to religion as a ‘basic good’, and the second to religion as an ‘intense preference’. In place of these, I suggest that a third type of argument has greater prospects of success. Religious accommodation is justified (...) on the grounds that religious conduct is a ‘derivative good’— that is, it derives its value from its being necessary for something else, namely, the integrity of the religious person. (shrink)

Departing from theories of distributive justice and their relation with the distribution of health care within society, especially egalitarianism and libertarianism, this paper aims at demonstrating that the approach taken by the European Court of Justice regarding the application of the Internal Market principles (or the market freedoms) to the field of health care services has introduced new values which are more concerned with a libertarian view of health care. Moreover, the paper also addresses the question of how these new (...) values introduced by the Court may affect common principles of European health systems, such as equity and accessibility. (shrink)

A close look at the rhetoric in America's recent welfare‐reform debate has both surprising and important implications for political philosophy. Political philosophers typically presume that opponents of redistribution are motivated by considerations other than equality. Recent arguments for welfare reform, however, have been formulated in a manner consistent with most contemporary egalitarian theories. This result should make us question either the political relevance of egalitarian ideals or the adequacy of those theories of equality.

This article asks whether firms should contribute to the costs of procreation and parenthood. We explore two sets of arguments. First, we ask what the principle of fair play – central in parental justice debates – implies. We argue that if one defends a pro-sharing view, firms are required to shoulder part of the costs of procreation and parenthood. Second, we turn to the principle of fair equality of opportunity. We argue that compensating firms for costs they incur because their (...) employees decide to procreate or parent may undermine some of the incentives leading to (statistical) discrimination in the workplace. (shrink)

Relational egalitarianism says that moral equals should relate as equals. We explore how moral unequals should relate.

According to relational egalitarianism, justice requires equal relations. The theory applies to those who stand in the relevant social relations. In this paper, I distinguish four different accounts of what it means to be socially related and argue that in all of them, self-relations—how a person relates to themselves—fall within the scope of relational egalitarianism. I also point to how this constrains what a person is allowed to do to themselves.

The article elaborates an original intertwined reading of republican theory, deliberative democracy and political equality. It argues that republicans, deliberative democrats and egalitarian scholars have not paid sufficient attention to a number of features present in these bodies of scholarships that relate them in mutually beneficial ways. It shows that republicanism and deliberative democracy are related in mutually beneficial ways, it makes those relations explicit, and it deals with potential objections against them. Additionally, it elaborates an egalitarian principle underpinning the (...) resulting model that I label Equality of Access and Deliberation. The upshot of these considerations is a novel and mutually reinforcing interrelated three-tiered theoretical and institutional proposal. (shrink)

Theories of distributive justice are often criticised for either excluding people with disabilities from the domain of justice altogether, or casting them as deficient in personal attributes. I argue that the capabilities approach to justice is largely immune to these flaws. It has the conceptual resources to locate most of the causes of disadvantage in the interaction between a person and her environment and in doing so can characterise the disadvantages of disability in a way that avoids the imputation of (...) natural deficiency. However, I also argue that the capabilities approach cannot accommodate some of the stronger claims advanced by some disability scholars. No plausible capabilities approach can guarantee that social change will always be the just or fair remedy for disadvantage, and there is a small number of severe cases of disability where capability shortfalls will be attributed to the person’s ‘deficient’ physical and mental impairments. (shrink)

The gendered division of labor is the major cause of gender inequality with respect to the broad spectrum of resources, occupations, and roles. Although many feminists aspire to an equality of outcome where there are no significant patterns of gender difference across these dimensions, many have also argued that liberal theories of social justice do not have the conceptual tools to justify a direct attack on the gendered division of labor. Indeed, many critics argue that liberalism positively condones it, presuming (...) that it arises from the free choices of individuals, which must be respected. In this paper I will accept the feminist goal of equality of outcome across roles, occupations, income, and wealth, but will argue that liberal theories of justice are consistent with strong measures aimed at promoting such equality. I will show that liberalism has the conceptual resources to justify a concrete policy measure that goes considerably beyond the measures usually championed by feminists. The example I focus on is “daddy quotas,” which refers to the tagging of a significant part of parental leave for the exclusive use of fathers. (shrink)

Recent discussions of genetic enhancement have argued that unregulated access to genetic enhancement technology will have a mainly negative impact on equality, a development that an egalitarian approach to distributive justice should be concerned with and seek to address. I argue that the extent to which egalitarians should be concerned about unequal access to genetic enhancement therapies has been overplayed. Many of the genetic differences that exist between people, including those that arise from differential access to genetic enhancement technology, are (...) simply irrelevant to egalitarian concerns. I also argue that most commentators have failed to appreciate that an egalitarian-inspired program of equal access to genetic enhancement technology may not be altogether favourable for the genetically disadvantaged in any case. The true implications of egalitarian justice in the genetic future have not been adequately explored. (shrink)

abstract This article defends luck egalitarianism as an interpretation of the egalitarian ideal against two major criticisms levelled against it by Elizabeth Anderson — that it is trapped in the distributive paradigm, and that it treats the victims of bad option luck too harshly to be considered an egalitarian theory. Against the first criticism, I argue that luck egalitarianism will condemn non‐material inequalities and injustices if an appropriate conception of well‐being is adopted. I demonstrate this by showing how the approach (...) is sensitive to the five faces of oppression developed by Iris Young. Although the second criticism is more troubling, it does not defeat luck egalitarianism, either. I will show that few of the inequalities that arise in the real world result from option luck. Further, if cases do occur, rather than abandoning the theory, the best response is to combine luck egalitarianism with another egalitarian principle that will ensure that the basic needs of all citizens are satisfied. The paper concludes by defending the appeal of the distinction between option luck and brute luck, in light of the preceding discussion. (shrink)

This paper argues that the best interpretation of Ronald Dworkin’s hypothetical insurance scheme is a holistic one that allows the parties to make choices between the policies that are available. This interpretation contrasts with the hypothecated and insurance-focused aspects that are traditionally understood as part of the procedure. The paper argues that the holistic interpretation better fits with the ideal of resource egalitarianism that people should have as much choice as possible from an equal starting point. It does so by (...) allowing people a choice over the policies that will be used to achieve their insurance preferences. (shrink)

This paper examines the relationship between the development of talented young sports people and conceptions of social justice. It is set within the context of recent policy developments in the United Kingdom that place renewed emphasis on talent development (and wider issues of ?gifted and talented education?), and justifies this with explicit reference to social justice. After providing a summary of relevant policy initiatives and their often-unstated presumptions, the paper goes on to examine the different ways in which philosophers have (...) conceptualised the role of luck in human affairs. Luck is a matter of particular interest to social justice theorists, who often frame their discussions in terms of the neutralisation of luck. This presents something of a problem for policy makers, as talent development seems destined to exaggerate the effects of luck, not neutralise them. In other words, it is suggested here that talent development cannot be justified in terms of social justice ? at least the version of social justice advocated my many of the leading theorists ? because it results in the opposite outcome than would be desired. None of this means that talent development is indefensible; it is just indefensible in the terms used in the UK talent development policy. (shrink)

Lifestyle diseases constitute an increasing proportion of health problems and this trend is likely to continue. A better understanding of the responsibility argument is important for the assessment of policies aimed at meeting this challenge. Holding individuals accountable for their choices in the context of health care is, however, controversial. There are powerful arguments both for and against such policies. In this article the main arguments for and the traditional arguments against the use of individual responsibility as a criterion for (...) the distribution of scarce health resources will be briefly outlined. It is argued that one of the most prominent contemporary normative traditions, liberal egalitarianism, presents a way of holding individuals accountable for their choices that avoids most of the problems pointed out by the critics. The aim of the article is to propose a plausible interpretation of liberal egalitarianism with respect to responsibility and health care and assess it against reasonable counter-arguments. (shrink)