Combined Equality Of Fortune

Beginning with Rawls's"A theory of Justice", Egalitarian tends to eliminate the impact of contingency to people's life. What is the primal problem in contemporary theories of equality is how to eliminate the bad luck which people cannot take responsibility for. Ronald Dworkin tries to integrate the responsibility with its equality of resources, and its embodiment is the target of equality of resources——"ambition- sensitive, endowment- insensitive"with the thought of"hold collective responsible for the impact of brute luck, and hold individuals responsible for the foreseeable consequeneces of the voluntary choices". It can be called"luck egalitarianism"for theories of equality which share this as their main goal. The content of western equality theories has focused on the debate between luck egalitarians and opponents in the recent ten years. In this article, the author tries to revise and defend the view of luck egalitarianism: Combined Equality of Fortune, and respond to the critique from opponents, then realize the ideal of"eliminate the impact of brute luck".This article starts with the theory of anti-deserve by Rawls, and argues that the theory of anti-deserve and two principles of justice all embody the basic spirit and aim of luck egalitarianism, and their status in luck egalitarianism cannot be neglected. As the the leading figure of luck egalitarianism, Ronald Dworkin tries to achieve the ideal of"ambition- sensitive, endowment- insensitive"by his equality of resources. In his theory, he distinguishes person and personal resources to explain the difference between psychological factors which affect one's voluntary chioce that people should take responsibility and personal circumstance. Person and personal resources represent two different responsibilities, the former embodies personal responsibility ,while the latter embodies collective responsibility. To make these responsibilities clear, Dworkin distinguishes two lucks: brute luck and option luck. The former belongs to the factor that people cannot be responsible for; the latter is the consequenece of the voluntary choices, and the responsibility should be taken by the individual. These distinctions not only set the fundamental mode of luck egalitarianism, but also become targets for the opponents. Richard J.Arneson argues that resources are instrumental that can only be paid attention to for the production of welfare, and what can figure out the problem about luck and responsibility is equality of opportunity for welfare, but both Dworkin and Amartya Sen advocate some preference should be responsible for by the individuals.. Maybe Sen's equality of capability can avoid these problems,but it also has constructive deficiency: lacking judgement for the standard of capability and the order among these capabilities makes it hard to become a systemic theory.Most debates for luck egalitarianism are from external critiques besides internal critiques. These critiques include three points: first, the victims by brute luck have the reasons not to compensate, and the procedure for making sure of the compensation cannot avoid the affect of paternalism, and this goes against our respect for people; second, it is hard for people to get the real free and effectivel opportunity before the option of luck, even if the opportunity is sufficient, people still cannot take responsibility for some option luck;third, distributive equality should regard more basic political and social equalities as the starting point.Luck egalitarians'responses to the questions above didn't change the single distributive model of luck egalitarianism. This paper tries to put forward a new framework of interpretation: combined equality of fortune for revising and defending the view of luck egalitarianism. The concept of combined equality of fortune refers to the use of other values and principles as a major supplement to luck egalitarianism. It's based on the theory of resouces equality, and combined with the principle of luck egalitarianism as secondary values. It can play an important role under particular circumstances. This paper begins with the argumentation of how different values can be combined, and steps forward to testify the rationality of combined equality of fortune. First, the author proposes the two principles of luck: If the consequeneces of the impact of bad luck are so harsh as to affect the citizens'right to subsistence and conditions for realizing their fundamental freedom, people have no obligation to take the whole responsibility; eliminating the impact of bad luck means to eliminate the impact of bad natural brute luck and bad occasional brute luck. Second, combined equality of fortune accepts Rwalsnism's method to define the conception of responsibility. In"A Theory of Justice", Rawls mentions the fair choice context that rational citizens look forward doesn't involve the voluntary choices which are able to make people disabling injury. Third, on the probability of combining different values, I accept the constructive value of equality which requires a multi -valuedcombinationin the framework of justice. At last, combined equality of fortune keeps space for other values to make up a deficiency, because it doesn't make judgmentsfor all the just problems, so when it is noncommittal at some point, we can introduce other values to fill the vacancy, which enables different values to coexist under certain circumstances.Combined equality of fortune brings in solidarity, negotiation and cooperation, basic freedom and etc. into luck egalitarianism to refute the critiques of relational equality advocates. It argues that"all citizens effective access to the social conditions of their freedom"in democratic equality is in accordance with"citizens have extensive basic freedom", and they are both from Rawls'first principle; participation, negotiation, recognition are all important values in democratic equality, they function in distributive justice by revised equality of capability which pursues the aim of luck egalitarianism, so negotiation can be applied into luck egalitarianism; the value of solidarity has been accepted and argued widely by luck egalitarianism, and it can be used in where the principle of luck egalitarianism cann't make judgement. Combined equality of fortune accept that distributive equality takes an important position in contemporary social justice, and the government should ensure equal social relation by distributing resources. Any relations among individuals will become relations between the government and individuals finally, and the aim of political theory will in the end realize a kind of rational systematic arrangement, but at the same time, incorporating values like negotiation from democratic equality make clear in a way that combined equality of fortune accepts the political and social values which have been widely agreed, and it also respond to the blame of luck egalitarianism by Samuel Scheffler.Combined equality of fortune isn't limited to the combination of inner values inside egalitarianism, and it can also accept values from nonegalitarianism. Sufficiency and priority both fall abreast with equality, they criticize equality for the reason that equality could bring"leveling down", but combined equality of fortune can prove that priority can also lead to"leveling down", and in the competition,"leveling down"can help the disadvantaged participate in the competition more fairly; the theory of priority cannot hold absolute criteria of judgment in the wide fide of social justice, and mustresort to the concept of relativity. The reason why the value of equality and priority can be combined is that the value of equality wouldn't occupy all the theories of equality, and it can be used when the principle of luck egalitarianism cann't judge, moreover, the first principle of luck also requires an"absolute"basic security. We should be deeply concerned about both the absolute level of morality and the relatively degree of personal situation when we distribute resources; at the same time, social justice need, more often, equal distribution on the base of satisfing basic need and freedom of individuals.The biggest problem of basic income is that it ignores personal responsibility, and lacks a basic commom moral value which enables the lazy enjoys the fruits of others'hard labor, and it's also hard to provide a rational standard for basic income. The value of basic income can combine with the principle of luck egalitarianism. Income equality means achieving economic equality by the model of equality of resources, and it attaches importance to the value of practice. In the frame of combined equality of fortune, a lower basic income can ensure everyone's basic living, provide opportunities for free choices and avoid putting people to shame by redistributing resources, at the same time, luck egalitarianism requires individuals who get basic income take responsibility for the voluntary choices of his own work; a higher basic income stem from the rise of the people's living standard, and hard-working ones can amass more wealth by hard work which makes a big difference fromthe lazy men in the quality of life, and it doesn't lead to the lack of responsibility.This paper doesn't put forward a commom political requirement for combined equality of fortune, but it simply t takes health care for an example to demonstrate three political practices which combined equality of fortune supports. First, medical insurance plan in the frame of equality of resources. Combined equality of fortune revises it by combining values; second,"the egalitarian planner"of Roemer. He generalizes all factors which are affected by bad luck, and finds a crowd who are fit for those factors, and individuals don't have the responsibility for shouldering the differences among the crowds. These differences require more resources of medical insurance being inclined to certain crowd. Combined equality of fortune interprets"the differences in a crowd", and it argues that bad luck of individuals is relatively universal, so everyone belongs to different crowds, and we can ensure everyone's compensation by dividing kinds of crowds; third, the impact of"trickle-down effect"on health equity."Trickle-down effect"is the problem that is debated widely in a practical sense by the values of equality and priority. Priority interpreted by combined equality of fortune is regarded as a combined value with equality at particular circumstance in the frame of egalitarianism. The effect that priority means to health is that the increase of salaries can result in the enhancement of health standard; the improvement of medical technologies and apparatus driven by requirement from those at high income levels will in due course trickle down to improve medical care for those who are at lower levels. So, Priority improves health equity by affecting income. The way of eliminating health inequality by improving the imcome level of the disadvantaged gives priority to health and is highly feasible in real practice.To sum up, combined equality of fortune can combine different values effectively, and make them play a role in the frame of luck egalitarianism. In comparison with the existing luck egalitarianism, combined equality of fortune is more diversified. It can both make institutional arrangement based on distributive justice and combine relational egalitarianism dimensionality and nonegalitarianism dimensionality by combining different values, and enables the common values to express the concern of luck egalitarianism, in order to achieve the aim of"ambition- sensitive","endowment- insensitive".