This paper argues that there are good reasons to limit the scope of luck egalitarianism to co‐existing people. First, I outline reasons to be sceptical about how “luck” works intergenerationally and therefore the very grounding of luck egalitarianism between non‐overlapping generations. Second, I argue that what Kasper Lippert‐Rasmussen calls the “core luck egalitarian claim” allows significant intergenerational inequality which is a problem for those who object to such inequality. Third, luck egalitarianism cannot accommodate the intuition that it might be required (...) to leave future generations better off than we are, even if it would come at no cost to ourselves. Finally, I argue that following another, broader, version of luck egalitarianism would require us to level down future generations and possibly even ourselves, which is a problem for those persuaded by the levelling‐down objection. (shrink)

Journal of Political Philosophy, EarlyView.

There is a deep divide amongst political philosophers of an egalitarian stripe. On the one hand, there are so-called distributive egalitarians, who hold that equality obtains within a political community when each of its members enjoys an equal share of the community’s resources. On the other hand, there are so-called social egalitarians, who instead hold that equality obtains within a political community when each of its members stands in certain relations to other members of the community, such non-domination and lack (...) of oppression, for example. In this paper, we have three aims. Our first aim is to cast doubt on the helpfulness of characterizing the debate in this way. Our second aim is to reconstruct this debate in alternative and more precise terms, so that disagreements between advocates of either side are easier to evaluate. Our third aim is to advance a hybrid account that integrates element from both views. (shrink)

Are democratic egalitarians bound to endorse statism? It seems so, since they insist on democratic reciprocity, and no such relation exists in the global realm. Would it not, then, be inconsistent to endorse both cosmopolitanism and democratic egalitarianism? Democratic egalitarians seemingly face a dilemma: either they accept statism, or they must explain why not. Luck egalitarianism, by contrast, seemingly grounds more straightforwardly the claim that justice is global in scope. My thesis is twofold: first, I show that democratic egalitarians can (...) escape the dilemma, to the effect that, as such, they need be committed neither to statism nor to cosmopolitanism, and that luck egalitarians are not as shielded from the dilemma as it might seem. Second, I defend the plausibility of global social egalitarianism against both statist variants of democratic egalitarianism and luck egalitarianism, and suggest a form of division of labor between domestic and global justice. (shrink)

Suppose that you must make choices that may influence the well-being and the identities of the people who will exist, though not the number of people who will exist. How ought you to choose? This paper answers this question. It argues that the currency of distributive ethics in such cases is a combination of an individual’s final well-being and her expected well-being conditional on her existence. It also argues that this currency should be distributed in an egalitarian, rather than a (...) prioritarian, manner. (shrink)

Derek Parfit held that in evaluating the future, we should ignore the difference between necessary persons and merely possible persons. In this article, I look at one of the most prominent alternatives to Parfit's view, namely Michael Otsuka and Larry Temkin ‘shortfall complaints’ view. In that view, we aggregate future persons’ well-being and deduct intrapersonal shortfall complaints, giving extra weight to the complaints of necessary persons. I offer here a third view. I reject Parfit's no difference view in that I (...) register a difference between necessary and possible persons. But I also reject the Shortfall View and replace its intra-personal complaints with an inter-personal complaints mechanism. I argue that the value of a population is its aggregate prioritarian value minus the egalitarian complaints that necessary persons hold. I show that the egalitarian view has all the explanatory power of the Shortfall view in easy cases, while significantly improving on it in three sorts of tough cases. (shrink)