Staying the hand of fortune : a pluralist approach to the regulatory strategies of luck egalitarian distributive justice
How can we pursue egalitarian distributive justice? Starting from the assumption that an egalitarian distribution of advantage is one in which no one is worse off than anyone else as a matter of luck, this thesis examines how such a distribution might be brought about. It begins with an investigation of how the luck egalitarian ideal should be interpreted, advancing a critique of the ‘attributivist’ approach to conceptualizing luck developed by Andrew Mason and a (limited) defence of the ‘metaphysical’ approach favoured by G. A. Cohen and others. It then turns to the question of what can be done about the inegalitarian influence of luck on people’s levels of advantage, proposing a pluralist approach to the regulatory strategies of luck egalitarian distributive justice. It argues that, in addition to ‘redistributive compensation’, strategies of ‘levelling’ and ‘direct structural regulation’ should be included in the luck egalitarian armoury. The thesis then applies these arguments to a case study of contemporary internships in the UK. While internships have become a crucial route into employment within many professional sectors, they have yet to receive any sustained critical attention from egalitarian political philosophers. The thesis demonstrates how the distribution of internships contributes to distributive injustice and then examines the various regulatory actions luck egalitarians might endorse in response to that injustice. The ways in which contemporary injustice is produced are many and varied: the pluralist approach to luck egalitarian regulatory strategies provides a useful and clear framework within which to identify and evaluate the many and varied ways in which we might respond.
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