Equal Opportunity and Its Problems
Equal Opportunity and Its Problems
This chapter examines the most attractive contemporary theories of equal opportunity, including those of John Rawls, Ronald Dworkin, and the luck egalitarians. It argues that these conceptions of equal opportunity suffer from a series of related flaws. They cannot be fulfilled as long as families exist. They depend on disentangling the effects of choice or effort from the effects of circumstance in a way that is conceptually impossible. They have difficulty accounting for the concatenation of opportunities—the way the outcomes of one contest set up the starting gate of the next. And finally, they may not promote the individuality and flourishing that were the best reasons to value equal opportunity in the first place. Thus, we need to reconceive equal opportunity in a fundamentally different way.
Keywords: equal opportunity, luck egalitarianism, John Rawls, Ronald Dworkin, choice, luck, circumstance, starting gate, individuality
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