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way that equal functioning in civil society and in political decision making is assured.
Suppose, moreover, that we can choose between two distributions: one that benefits
those who are worse off in terms of how well their lives go, and another that benefits
those who are best off in terms of how well their lives go. Since this choice will not affect
democratic equality, these options are equally good on Anderson's account. To many, this
is an unattractive implication of her view. Of course, if the threshold of equal functioning
is very high the problem becomes less serious. However, with high thresholds a different
problem becomes more serious. For if people should be assured of equal functioning at a
very high level irrespective of whether they act (perhaps repeatedly) in irresponsibly
foolish ways, it will not seem fair to impose the cost of their choices on othersi.e., the
cost of bringing them up to the appropriate threshold of equal functioning (Arneson 2000,
347348; for a reply, see Anderson (Other Internet Resources, 2(e)). Intuitively, then, the
complaint is that democratic equality ascribes no significance to the fact that
responsibility can negate luck. It is far from clear that concern about equal status
overturns the pivotal belief that justice is concerned with compensation for bad luck (see,
however, Scheffler 2003; Scheffler 2005).