Philos Stud (2012) 160:323–343
DOI 10.1007/s11098-011-9721-6
The limits of fair equality of opportunity
Benjamin Sachs
Published online: 13 April 2011
Springer Science+Business Media B.V. (outside the USA) 2011
Abstract The principle of fair equality of opportunity is regularly used to justify
social policies, both in the philosophical literature and in public discourse. However, too often commentators fail to make explicit just what they take the principle
to say. A principle of fair equality of opportunity does not say anything at all until
certain variables are filled in. I want to draw attention to two variables, timing and
currency. I argue that once we identify the few plausible ways we have at our
disposal for filling in those variables, it will become apparent that a reasonable
version of the principle will be quite narrow. Its usefulness as a justificatory basis
for social policies will be limited to those policies that target the distribution of
competitive opportunities among people entering majority.
Keywords
Fair equality of opportunity Rawls
1 Introduction
The principle of equality of opportunity became a central topic in philosophy with
the publication of A Theory of Justice.1 In it, Rawls argued that we should go
beyond careers open to talents, a version of the principle in which social positions
are formally available to everyone, and adopt a more substantive version of equality
of opportunity in which equally talented people have an equal chance of attaining
them—‘‘fair equality of opportunity’’. He went on to suggest that such a principle
1
Rawls (1971).
B. Sachs (&)
Program in Environmental Studies and Center for Bioethics, New York University,
285 Mercer Street, Room 908, New York, NY 10003, USA
e-mail: [email protected]
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could be used to justify universal education at public expense2 and an inheritance
tax.3 Other than that, he was silent on the question of what social policies could be
grounded in fair equality of opportunity.4 In the years since A Theory of Justice was
published, philosophers have appealed to fair equality of opportunity as a theoretical
basis for all manner of social policies, such as universal health care,5 continuing
education and job training programs6 and affirmative action.7 My intention here is to
raise doubts about whether the principle of fair equality of opportunity is suitable to
be invoked in defense of policies such as these.
The first ingredient in any successful fair equality of opportunity-based argument
for a social policy is a convincing principle of fair equality of opportunity, yet work
remains to be done in figuring out how to construct one. Principles of fair equality of
opportunity differ based on how certain variables are filled in, and we need to find
out which ways of filling in those variables yield a plausible principle. In this article
I undertake just that investigation and conclude that the most plausible versions of
the principle of fair equality of opportunity will be quite narrow. Their justificatory
power will be limited to a very small number of social policies that are similar, in
certain specifiable ways, to the ones Rawls advocated. Therefore, if we want to find
justification for a wider range of social policies, we should concentrate our efforts
on determining whether other principles of justice are equal to the task.8
Before proceeding, a word on methodology. In what follows I will object to
various versions of fair equality of opportunity on the grounds that those versions
support unacceptable social policies. One might worry that any such objection
reflects a failure to distinguish principles of justice from principles of regulation.
2
Ibid., pp. 73, 87, 278.
3
Ibid., pp. 277–278.
4
The principle of fair equality of opportunity encompasses the principle of careers open to talents, which
itself justifies social policies such as antidiscrimination laws. In this article I am concerned with what
follows from the part of the principle of fair equality of opportunity that goes beyond careers open to
talents.
5
Daniels (1985, chap. 3; and 2008, chap. 2); Pogge (1989, §16); Buchanan et al. (2000, chap. 3).
6
Daniels (1985, pp. 34 and 41; 2008, p. 53).
7
Specifically, affirmative action for the purpose of achieving equality between the races or sexes. Jacobs
(2004, chaps. 4–5). (It should be noted that Jacobs explicitly rejects the Rawlsian version of fair equality
of opportunity; see chap. 3 of his book.) Insofar as affirmative action is backward-looking, or conceived
of as compensation for past or ongoing discrimination, careers open to talents is the most likely source of
justification. Contrast Shanley and Segers (1979).
8
One might worry that if we are so confident in the rightness of that wider range of social policies, then it
is disingenuous to feign an interest in principles of justice. In other words, if we’re just going to advocate
for the policies that seem right to us then searching for principles of justice that can justify them is little
more than a game. Notice, however, that there is work to be done even if we are totally confident in the
rightness of a certain social policy. Namely, we will still need to determine its precise shape. And I submit
that the precise shape of a social policy often ought to depend on which principle of justice justifies it.
Take universal health care as an example of a social policy that most liberals are confident is right. If that
policy were justified based on equality of opportunity, then it would appear that we should opt for a
system in which out-of-pocket purchase of supplemental health care is banned. This would ensure that no
one uses his greater resources to secure for himself a greater-than-equal opportunity via the purchase of
better health care. If, on the other hand, universal health care were justified based on a principle of
sufficiency then that argument for such a system would be muted.
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Principles of justice don’t on their own require or rule out any social policies at all.
In order to get from a principle of justice to a principle of regulation—that is, a
principle that tells us which social policies to enact—we need empirical information
about the likely effects of various policies and we need to determine whether we
accept other principles that have their own consequences for social policy (when
supplemented by the relevant empirical information).
Inevitably, then, discussing the implications of principles of justice for social
policies involves a fudge. One never has all the relevant empirical information and
almost no one claims to have worked out a complete system of principles. But
discussion of social policy cannot wait, so we should do the best we can. In the spirit
of making political philosophy relevant to real-world issues, we have to make
reasonable assumptions about the facts and about which other principles will
ultimately be vindicated. Various theorists have done just that and arrived at
conclusions about which social policies can draw support from the principle of fair
equality of opportunity. Here I do the same, albeit in support of less sanguine
conclusions.
2 The variables
If we believe in fair equality of opportunity (FEO), then we believe
FEO1: Opportunity should be equal among the equally talented.
This will serve as my template for principles of fair equality of opportunity.
What does it mean for opportunity to be equal? This, of course, depends on what
an opportunity is. I will follow Richard Arneson in defining an opportunity as a
chance of getting a good if one seeks it.9 Equality of opportunity for X among
a given group of people, then, obtains when everyone in that group has as likely of a
chance of getting X if they seek it.10 But what determines how likely one’s chance is
to get a good if one seeks it? There are multiple possible outcomes of any attempt to
obtain something. (Which of a person’s possible outcomes becomes her actual
outcome depends on the choices she and others make, the talents she and others
were born with, social circumstances, and luck.) So the likelihood of one’s chance
of obtaining X if one seeks it is the number of one’s possible futures in which one
obtains X divided by the number of one’s possible futures in which one seeks X
(there will often be multiple such possible futures, since there are often many
different ways of seeking some good).
There are two immediate implications of this conception of opportunity that are
worth pointing out. First, having an opportunity is a matter of degree, though one
can entirely lack an opportunity (if none of my possible futures involve obtaining X,
then I have no opportunity for X). Second, since an opportunity is ultimately
understood in terms of possible futures and the future is relative to a point in time,
opportunity is indexed to a point in time. There is an individual’s current
9
10
Arneson (1989, p. 85).
This is what Douglas Rae calls ‘‘prospect-regarding’’ equality of opportunity (Rae 1981, chap. 4).
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opportunity to get X, the opportunity she had 10 min ago, and the opportunity she
will have 3 years from now; but there is no sense to be made of her opportunity to
get X, full stop. I take it that these implications are intuitively plausible and thus
count in favor of the suggested definition of opportunity. We will have additional
chances as we go on to ascertain whether this definition accurately depicts what, on
reflection, we take opportunity to be.
I said earlier that FEO1 is a mere template. This is because it leaves two variables
unassigned. Inserting blank spaces where the variables need to be filled in, we get
FEO2: Opportunity for ________ should be equal at ________ among the equally
talented.11
The first variable is that of currency. No principle of fair equality of opportunity is
complete until it identifies which opportunity is to be distributed equally, whether
the opportunity for welfare, jobs, or something else. This opportunity is the
currency. The second variable is the time at which the distribution should be equal,
whether all the time, just once, or something else. This is the variable of timing.
I want to discuss how we ought to fill in these two variables, beginning with timing.
3 Timing
First, we’ll stipulate that our currency is opportunity for X. Now suppose that at t0
every member of some population of equally-talented people has an equal
opportunity to obtain X. Then at t1 one member of this population uses some of the
resources at her disposal in order to change the possible outcomes of some of her
future choices, such that a higher proportion of her possible futures involve
obtaining X. Call this sort of behavior investment. Exactly what actions count as
investment will depend on what X is, but let’s suppose for now that X is a desirable
job. We might imagine, then, that this person uses her money to enroll in night
school at a local college in order to work toward a master’s degree in school
administration. This action results in her becoming a more appealing candidate for a
position as a school principal. Therefore, among the various choices she might make
in the future, such as applying for the principal position at School 1, applying for the
principal position at School 2, etc., more of the possible outcomes of those choices
involve becoming a principal. This means that a higher proportion of her possible
future lifetimes involve becoming a school principal. According to the definition of
opportunity, she now has a better opportunity to become a school principal. This
being the case, we will find at t2 that the opportunity sets of the members of the
population are no longer equal (unless everyone else has been busy enhancing their
opportunity to become a principal as well).
What this example is intended to show is that equality of opportunity is not selfperpetuating. Since people really do invest, no pattern of opportunity-distribution is
11
FEO2 presumes the correctness of Rawls’s claim that the groups of people within which equality of
opportunity ought to obtain are groups of equally talented individuals. This should not be taken as an
insistence that Rawls’s claim is unassailable. It’s just that I have nothing to say about it here.
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naturally stable.12 This is why timing is a variable. If equalizing opportunity among
a population at t0 entailed equalizing opportunity among that population for the rest
of time, then there would be no variable. We would either equalize or we wouldn’t.
But this isn’t how things work. If we equalize opportunity among a population and
then stand aside, the distribution of opportunity will soon become unequal.13
Maintaining an equal distribution of opportunity requires intervention.
Should we intervene? There are three possible answers to this question. The first
answer is yes, we should perpetually intervene so as to ensure that the distribution
always remains equal. The second answer is yes, we should intermittently intervene
so that the distribution is intermittently equal. The third answer is no. These three
answers correspond to three versions of the principle of fair equality of opportunity,
which differ by how their timing variable is assigned:
Perpetual FEO: Opportunity should be equal at all times among the equally
talented.
Intermittent FEO: Opportunity should be equal intermittently among the equally
talented.
One-Time FEO: Opportunity should be equal at one time among the equally
talented.
We need to know which of these versions of the principle of fair equality of
opportunity is the most plausible. Unfortunately, it has not been widely recognized
that timing is a variable. Of course, it is possible to read off an implicit answer to the
question from some theorists’ work. David Miller, for instance, pretty clearly
prefers One-Time FEO,14 as do Bruce Ackerman and Anne Alstott.15 But we should
want more; we should want an argument for a particular interpretation. In the
remainder of this section I argue that One-Time FEO is the most plausible
interpretation of FEO. I begin by offering an objection to Perpetual FEO.16
My objection to Perpetual FEO is that insofar as we favor maintaining an equal
distribution of opportunity for X perpetually we must to that extent oppose
investment. Yet there seems to be no reason to oppose investment; rather, it seems
like the kind of activity that we should encourage. We should, for instance,
encourage people to use their money to enroll in master’s programs in school
12
Investment is not the only cause of instability. By definition, anything that alters the distribution of
opportunity is a cause of instability. So, for instance, when people engage in the opposite of investment—
when they waste an opportunity—the distribution is disrupted. And luck, certainly, can rearrange the
distribution of opportunity. The reason I focus on investment will become clear later in this section.
13
Clare Chambers has devised an eloquent phrase for this problem, and it is the title of Chambers (2009).
See also Rae (1981, p. 75).
14
Miller (2002, p. 47).
15
Ackerman and Alstott (2010). In this book Ackerman and Alstott advocate, on the basis of equality of
opportunity, a policy of giving every high school graduate a one-time US $80,000 cash payment.
16
One might suggest that Perpetual FEO can be easily dismissed on account of its being impossible to
literally make everyone’s opportunity level at all times. But I reject the claim that unachievable principles
of justice cannot be true principles of justice. Here I follow Cohen (2008, chap. 6), Mason (2004), and
Swift (2008).
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administration. But Perpetual FEO tells us to do just the opposite.17 This implication
of Perpetual FEO emerges as even more objectionable once we acknowledge the
obvious fact that there are other things one can do with one’s resources besides
invest them. Earlier I defined ‘‘investment’’ as any use of one’s resources to increase
the proportion of one’s possible futures that involve obtaining X. Let’s now define
‘‘consumption’’ as the use of one’s resources in ways that do not alter that
proportion. By the definition of opportunity, consumption has no effect on the
distribution of opportunity. Therefore, equality of opportunity does not support
restrictions on consumption. This on its own is not counterintuitive, but the
conjunction of support for this policy and support for a total ban on investment is.
It’s a strange principle of distributive justice that welcomes the purchase of
expensive European vacations yet condemns enrollment in continuing education
courses.
That Perpetual FEO supports a ban on investment follows straightforwardly from
my definitions of investment and opportunity. However, now that it’s clear how
much trouble this fact makes for Perpetual FEO, one might be inclined to challenge
the definitions. Of course, my definition of ‘investment’ is pure stipulation, and as
such cannot be challenged. But my definition of ‘opportunity’ was supposed to
capture what the word actually means, and so might be inaccurate.
What definition of opportunity would allow us to avoid the conclusion that
maintaining equality of opportunity perpetually is incompatible with allowing
people to invest? Since investment, by definition, alters the likelihood of obtaining
X if one seeks it, we need a definition of opportunity that implies that such
alterations do not always constitute changes in one’s opportunity.
We might borrow a solution from Ronald Dworkin. Dworkin was intent on
defending the principle of equality of resources, and needed to find a way to say that
changes in the distribution of (for instance) wealth do not necessarily count as
changes in the distribution of resources. That way he could defend the idea that
resources should be distributed equally without committing himself to prohibiting
people from taking gambles that result in gain or loss of wealth. What he ended up
saying was that any gain or loss in a person’s wealth brought about via a gamble
(i.e., an informed choice) would be calculated not according to the amount lost or
gained, but rather according to the expected value of the gamble. So, for instance, if
I get 1:1 odds on the toss of a coin, wager US $100 on heads and the toss comes up
heads, my resource holding is to be calculated at US $100 (the expected value of the
gamble), rather than US $200, which is what I now have. In this way, people who
had the same alternatives open to them can be said to have the same set of resources
17
It has been suggested to me that we can finesse this problem by advocating perpetual equality of
opportunity to invest alongside whatever other version of perpetual equality of opportunity we want to
advance. But this will not work, for two reasons. First, equality can be achieved at any level, so equality
of opportunity to invest, on its own, favors an unconstrained freedom to invest no more than it favors an
exceptionless prohibition on investment. Second, equality of opportunity to invest, like all other versions
of equality of opportunity, cannot perpetuate itself. Therefore, perpetual equality of opportunity to invest
requires a ban on activities that augment one’s opportunity to invest—what we might call ‘‘metainvestments.’’ Yet meta-investing, like investing, seems like a good thing.
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even when, after a series of gambles, they no longer have equal wealth.18 Similarly,
it is open to us to say that from a baseline of equally likely chances of obtaining X,
opportunity level is not to be recalculated every time an individual experiences an
increase or decrease in her likelihood, but rather according to the expected value of
the choice situation the individual faced immediately preceding the increase or
decrease (when the choice is informed). In this way, equality of opportunity may
continue to hold even when equality of likelihood no longer does.
Whatever the merits of this account, its construal of opportunity is implausible.
When one person makes a choice that leads to her having a likelier chance of
obtaining X, while another person in the same situation makes a choice that leads to
her having a less likely chance, we customarily say that the former has improved
and the latter has squandered an opportunity to obtain X. But if we calculate
opportunity according to the value of the choice situation faced, we can no longer
say this.
To rob this objection of its force it is open to us to say that we are using ‘equality
of opportunity’ metaphorically—that we never intended to insist that the distribution of opportunity, given what the distribution of opportunity actually is, be equal
among equally talented people. But this seems like a hasty surrender. We do not yet
have an argument on the table that fair equality of opportunity, understood literally,
is an implausible ideal. All we have is one objection to one version of fair (literal)
equality of opportunity—Perpetual FEO.
Perhaps anticipating that an analogous objection might be raised against his
equality of resources account, Ronald Dworkin insists that equality of resources is
equal distribution of resources over a lifetime. One’s ‘lifetime resources’ are just
that level of resources that one can be expected, ex ante (i.e., before one’s informed
resource-affecting choices, such as decisions to invest, are made), to enjoy over the
course of one’s lifetime. Similarly, we could say that equality of opportunity is an
ex ante equal distribution of opportunity over a lifetime. This way, changes in
likelihood ex post do not count as changes in opportunity level. But this is not a
defense of Perpetual FEO; this is a retreat to One-Time FEO with the ‘‘one time’’
being the time at which the ex ante assessment is made.
We will have a chance to consider the merits of One-Time FEO soon, but having
laid out an objection to Perpetual FEO I now want to raise an objection to
Intermittent FEO. That principle speaks in favor of limiting, but not eliminating, the
effects of opportunity-affecting decisions made after the ‘‘one time.’’ Intermittent
FEO tells us to periodically nullify the effects of previous opportunity-affecting
decisions such that equality of opportunity is re-established. My objection is that
this position is unmotivated. The periodic nullification policy that Intermittent FEO
supports seems like the result of a compromise between principles, as opposed to a
policy that can be directly supported by a principle.
It might be argued, however, that despite initial appearances periodic nullification does admit of a defense based on a principle: the principle of background
fairness. The idea, familiar from Rawls, is that we should allow people to compete
for power, wealth, and other goods only so long as this competition takes place
18
Dworkin (2000, pp. 74–76).
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against a backdrop of fair conditions. Conditions are unfair, according to Rawls,
when there are vast accumulations of wealth and power concentrated in the hands of
the few, even when this results only from transactions that in and of themselves are
unobjectionable.19 One might think that the answer to this problem is to intervene
periodically after the ‘‘one time’’ in order to prevent things from getting too out of
hand. This doesn’t seem to be Rawls’s answer,20 and more importantly it is no
defense of Intermittent FEO. Rather, assuming that a concern about the distribution
of opportunity is the reason for our periodic intervention—which of course it might
not be—it would appear that perpetual approximate equality of opportunity is what
we’re after. There is a very important difference, which we should not overlook,
between saying that things should never be allowed to get too unequal and saying
that things should intermittently be equal.
It also might be suggested, alternatively, that periodic nullification is a way of
ensuring that the effect of a choice not be disproportionate to the significance of the
choice itself. More colloquially, the idea would be that the punishment should fit the
crime (and the reward should fit the good deed). It does not appear, however, that
the periodic nullification of the effects of opportunity-affecting choices, which is
what Intermittent FEO advocates, would serve this end. The size of an effect is a
function of many variables, only one of which is how much time it lasts. Yet
periodic nullification would attend only to the variable of time. Thus, periodic
nullification cannot be expected to secure the goal of proportionality between the
significance of a choice and the size of its effect.
This completes the case against Intermittent FEO. To set the stage for a defense
of One-Time FEO, I want to illustrate, first, why that principle is not subject to the
objections that doomed Perpetual and Intermittent FEO.
The objection levied against Perpetual FEO was based on that principle’s support
for a ban on investment. Perpetual FEO yields that troublesome result because it is a
patterned principle of justice—a principle that requires the distribution of the
currency to conform to a pattern. One-Time FEO avoids the objection to which
Perpetual FEO is vulnerable because although it is a patterned principle of justice, it
is not patterned in the wrong way. In his classic objection to patterned principles of
justice, Robert Nozick invites us to imagine that whatever patterned principle of
justice we support is realized at some point in time and that after that point in time
people engage in voluntary transactions that disrupt the pattern. Assuming, for the
sake of argument, that the currency of our patterned theory of justice is money,
Nozick asks us to suppose that a group of people spend some of their money on
tickets to see Wilt Chamberlain play basketball. These transactions result in a
different distribution of money—namely one in which Chamberlain has much more
19
Rawls (1993, p. 267; 2001, pp. 44, 53).
20
Rawls recommends fixing this problem through educational policy and laws governing inheritance and
bequest (see Rawls 2001, p. 53). (Rawls also makes reference to the use of ‘‘taxes’’ (p. 51), but this
doesn’t tell us much since we don’t know what kinds of tax are being recommended.) Such policies do
nothing to combat inequalities arising after the ‘‘one time’’; in fact they do nothing at all to limit how
much wealth and power a person can accumulate over a lifetime. This suggests that the only accumulation
Rawls considers a threat to background justice is intergenerational accumulation.
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than he did before and all of his fans have a bit less.21 Nozick expects us to have the
intuition that we should allow this new distribution to take hold. If we have this
intuition, then this puts pressure on us to abandon our commitment to the patterned
principle of justice that we hitherto supported. However, if the patterned principle
we support is a one-time principle, then having this intuition does not require any
such abandonment. This, of course, is because one-time principles themselves allow
for equal distributions to be disrupted. Thus, one-time principles avoid Nozick’s
objection.
One-Time FEO also avoids the objection to which Intermittent FEO was found
vulnerable, which is that the way it treats opportunity-affecting decisions after the
‘‘one time’’ is unprincipled. One-Time FEO treats all such decisions the same way;
it leaves them be. A defense of this policy can be grounded in the liberal ideal—the
notion that people should be free to make choices that determine the shape of their
lives except in cases in which there is a strong justification to the contrary.
One might worry, however, that it is not enough to show that One-Time FEO has
a principled way of dealing with opportunity-affecting decisions made after the
‘‘one time.’’ What we need is a principled way of dealing with opportunity-affecting
decisions full stop. One-Time FEO allows one’s choices to affect one’s opportunity
level only some of the time, and thus appears unstable in a worrisome way. This
objection comes from Dworkin. His intended target was what he called ‘startinggate’ theories of fairness, of which One-Time FEO may well be a species:
The starting-gate theory holds that justice requires equal initial resources. But
it also holds that justice requires laissez-faire thereafter…. But these two
principles cannot live comfortably together. Equality can have no greater force
in justifying equal initial holdings…than later in justifying redistributions
when wealth becomes unequal because people’s productive talents are
different.22
The particular starting-gate theory with which Dworkin is concerned is a certain
version of the principle of equality of resources, hence his concern with the
distribution of wealth. But an analogue of Dworkin’s concern applies to the case of
equality of opportunity. The concern is that if there is a moral case to be made in
favor of allowing the distribution of opportunity at certain points in time to be
determined by choices, then that same argument will support allowing the
distribution to be determined by choices at all times. It would appear, in other
words, that there is no principled defense of One-Time FEO’s wedding of
egalitarianism at the start and liberalism thereafter.
It turns out, however, that the liberal ideal does not support allowing the
distribution to be determined by choices at all times. That ideal must be grounded in
a conception of the person on which it is right or fitting that people should
experience the effects of the choices they make. But no such conception of
personhood, if it is to be plausible, could apply to the person at all stages of life.
21
Nozick (1974, pp. 160–164). Thanks to Alan Wertheimer for reminding me of the relevance of
Nozick’s example.
22
Dworkin (2000, pp. 87–88).
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In early stages of life it is significantly less right or fitting that a person should
experience the effects of the choices she makes. So there is a natural limit to the
scope of the liberal ideal.23
Dworkin’s objection, however, has a second prong. He also doubts that it could
be the case that the argument favoring an equal initial distribution could fail to
justify an equal distribution thereafter. Clare Chambers raises this objection as well.
She is skeptical of the idea that the considerations favoring redistributing
opportunity before the ‘‘one time’’ do not also favor redistributing afterward. We
might respond with a promissory note, claiming that once we make our case for
liberalism, we will find that the case for equality (and thus redistribution) is partially
overridden by the case for liberalism (and thus refraining from redistribution). But
Dworkin anticipates this response and rejoins that if the case for liberalism ends up
being stronger than the case for equality, then the case for equality should never get
off the ground in the first place. At this point, however, we may fall back on what
we have already demonstrated, which is that the liberal ideal is naturally
circumscribed. The ideal is strong—stronger than the egalitarian ideal, we are
assuming—when applied to people at later stages of life, but impotent when applied
to people at earlier stages of life because children are not properly held responsible
for their choices.24
In the end, therefore, my argument for One-Time FEO is an argument by proxy.
My main concern has been to demonstrate that One-Time FEO escapes certain
objections to which Perpetual FEO and Intermittent FEO are vulnerable. Completing the argument for One-Time FEO will require actually laying out the arguments
for liberalism and for egalitarianism; I have merely gestured in the general direction
of such arguments. But since I am concerned to establish only that if we accept FEO
then we should accept One-Time FEO, this is good enough.
It bears emphasizing that nothing I have said so far purports to show that all
versions of One-Time FEO are plausible. Versions of One-Time FEO will vary
depending on how the currency variable is assigned, and some should be rejected.
This concession does nothing to undermine my general point that One-Time FEO is
per se the most plausible version of FEO. What would undermine this point would
be a counterexample that shows that if we assign the currency in a specific way,
One-Time FEO emerges as less acceptable than some other version of FEO.
Suppose, for instance, that the currency is the opportunity to not starve to death or to
be educated. Given these currencies, shouldn’t we accept Perpetual FEO instead of
23
In fairness to Dworkin, he was assuming for simplicity that the people among whom goods were to be
distributed were all adults. What he objected to was one-time equality of resources among adults.
24
Chambers anticipates this move, however, and argues that if we say that the egalitarian ideal is
overridden in the case of adults then we must refuse to indemnify adults against the choices they made as
children whose effects emerge only after the passage of time (Chambers 2009, p. 395). (Chambers offers
the example of the choices secondary school students make about which foreign languages to learn.) But
this is not the case. If in our actual world we cannot achieve the goal of One-Time FEO without
redistributing after the ‘‘one time,’’ One-Time FEO itself recommends intervening after the one time.
Chambers also has a second response, which is that the boundary between the stage of life during
which one is properly held responsible for one’s choices and the stage of life when one isn’t is vague (pp.
394–395). This is true but doesn’t undermine the case for One-Time FEO. The distinction on which OneTime FEO relies remains intact, though now we know that that distinction is vague.
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One-Time FEO? Shouldn’t we want these opportunities to be distributed evenly at
all times, as opposed to just once?
The correct answer, surprisingly, is no. We shouldn’t care at all about equalizing
opportunity to not starve and to be educated, whether one time, intermittently or
perpetually. All versions of FEO are implausible when conjoined with currencies
such as these. What we should care about is that everyone be able to not starve and
be educated. Everyone can have as likely of a chance for these things as they could
possibly want, and so aiming to merely equalize the distribution of these
opportunities is much too weak of a goal. Ironically, then, the lesson we learn by
considering the plausibility of principles such as fair equality of opportunity to not
starve to death or fair equality of opportunity to be literate is not that we need to be
careful about how we assign the timing variable, but rather that we need to be
careful about how we assign the currency variable.25 We will have occasion to
incorporate this lesson into our later discussion of currency.
This completes my case for One-Time FEO. It remains for us now to determine
what that one time should be. The answer, I think, is clear: the one time should be
the time in people’s lives when it becomes right or fitting that they should make
choices that affect their opportunity level.26 It is generally thought that this time in a
person’s life is the age of majority—the time when she emerges from childhood. In
fact, for the sake of moving the discussion forward, I will simply assume that it is
definitive of childhood that it is the time in a person’s life when it is not right or
fitting that her decisions should affect her opportunity level.27 This being the case,
we finally have our answer to how we ought to assign the timing variable.
With the timing variable assigned and the currency variable still unassigned, our
principle is now:
FEO3: Opportunity should be equal at the age of majority among the equally
talented.28
25
Alternatively, if we are firmly committed to the idea that there must be some principle regulating the
distribution of opportunities for X, we need to be careful not to assume that that principle should be an
egalitarian one. Suppose, for instance, that we believe that the distribution of opportunity for education is
a matter of justice. We shouldn’t immediately jump to the conclusion that what we support is equality of
opportunity for education. For instance, Alexander Brown argues that it is unjust that people should have
just one chance to get an education (i.e., the chance they have as children to attend school at public
expense). What justice requires, Brown argues, is that everyone’s chance for an education should be
lifelong. Brown says that this is an argument for equality of opportunity for education. But it is actually an
argument for sufficiency of opportunity for education. (See Brown 2006).
26
Perhaps expressing support for this idea, Rawls says that ‘‘those who have the same level of talent and
ability and the same willingness to use these gifts should have the same prospects of success regardless of
their social class of origin, the class into which they are born and develop until the age of reason,’’ (2001,
p. 44, italics mine).
27
I set aside cases in which an adult, because of illness or accident, becomes the kind of individual for
whom it is not fitting that her choices should affect her opportunity level.
28
One additional question remains: whether to require fair equality of opportunity among those entering
majority at any time, or just among people entering majority at the same time. That is, should we require
that the opportunity level of today’s cohort of young adults be equivalent to that of the cohort of young
adults 20 years ago? How we ought to answer this question depends in part on how we assign the
currency variable, but here’s a preliminary impression. People entering majority today are in competition
for many of the same positions as people who entered majority 20 years ago, and it does not seem fair that
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B. Sachs
This principle is indifferent to the distribution of opportunity after majority. What
this means is that on its most plausible interpretation the principle of fair equality of
opportunity says nothing about how opportunity should be distributed among adults
after their first moment of adulthood.
The implications for social policy of this limitation on FEO are easy to see, but it
might be worthwhile to discuss some examples anyway. Take, for instance,
continuing education and job training programs. Insofar as these programs are
targeted at altering the distribution of opportunity among adults, FEO3 cannot be
invoked in their defense. While FEO3 may well favor the equalization of
opportunity for good jobs (depending on how the currency variable is assigned),
it would instruct us to achieve this goal by devoting more resources toward primary
and secondary education so that employment prospects are already equalized by the
time people reach majority.
It may be objected that if this is what FEO3 requires, then the principle is simply
unrealistic. What a person entering adulthood is capable of doing is strongly
influenced by factors outside society’s control, most notably the way she was
raised.29 And even the factors that are under societal control are not under its perfect
control. The world envisioned by FEO3, where equally talented people entering
majority face equivalent prospects, is an unattainable dream world. It would appear,
then, that by rejecting any version of FEO that sanctions social policies targeted at
adults we eliminate the justification for the state’s later effort to mitigate the
consequences of its inevitable failure to equalize opportunity among people entering
majority.
Yet FEO3 can be used to justify these measures, albeit as matters of
compensatory justice. Insofar as the state fails to secure equality of opportunity
among people entering majority, there is a case to be made based on compensatory
justice for job training, continuing education and other programs that help those
individuals whose opportunity set was never brought up to the target level.
Something similar might be said about unemployment benefits and affirmative
action in hiring. In a world where FEO3 was in force, no such policies would be
necessary for achieving fair equality of opportunity. This, however, does not entail
that in our actual world workplace affirmative action is unjustifiable by reference to
fair equality of opportunity. FEO3 simply has the implication that the choice
between equalizing opportunity before majority by sinking resources into public
education and equalizing opportunity after majority by setting up job training and
perhaps workplace affirmative action programs is not a toss-up. Doing the former is
Footnote 28 continued
those entering majority today should, through no effort of their own, have a better (or worse) opportunity
to obtain those positions than those who entered majority 20 years ago. Consequently, I’m inclined to
interpret the principle as requiring equality of opportunity for those entering majority at any time. But I
also think that this is one of the cases where equality of opportunity has to be balanced against other
ideals. In particular, we want to allow society to progress, and this includes the opening up of new ways
of life. When new ways of life become available in a society, the pool of opportunities expands and thus
inter-cohort equality of opportunity becomes unachievable.
29
Hence Rawls’s comment about the family being a barrier to the realization of fair equality of
opportunity. (1971, p. 511).
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The limits of fair equality of opportunity
335
what fair equality of opportunity requires; doing the latter is second-best. It also has
implications for who should be eligible to benefit from such programs—namely,
people who had less-than-equal opportunity upon entering majority. So while FEO3
is indeed unachievable, it has important implications nonetheless.30
Having reached our answer regarding how to assign the timing variable, and
having investigated the implications of this fact, we turn now to the question of how
to assign the currency variable.
4 Currency
In this section I give an answer, albeit a vague one, to that question. I arrive at that
answer by considering how a proponent of equality of opportunity might respond to
the leveling down objection. This discussion is premised on a very important
assumption: the leveling down objection has force against equality of opportunity.
I will not argue for this assumption; I will simply show that the objection applies in
the exact same way to equality of opportunity as it does to other egalitarian
principles, such as equality of welfare or equality of resources. Therefore, if the
objection has force in general, it has force against equality of opportunity. I am
aware that some theorists deny that the objection has force in general. Again,
however, I simply assume that they are wrong.
4.1 The leveling down objection to equality of opportunity
In discussing how to assign the currency variable, we are deciding which
opportunity we want to equalize. Suppose we want to equally distribute opportunity
for welfare. By use of a thought experiment, it can be shown that this view is
vulnerable to an objection. First, assume that one determinant of an individual’s
opportunity for welfare is the leisure time at her disposal.31 Now imagine that in
World 1 at present, everyone has either 5 hours or 3 hours of leisure time every day.
The former people constitute Group A and the latter Group B. This distribution of
opportunity is depicted on the left side of Fig. 1. Now suppose that through the
enactment of social policies we could bring about World 2 in which everyone had
2 hours of leisure time. This distribution of opportunity is depicted on the right side
of Fig. 1.
If Fig. 1 represents our range of options, then equality of opportunity for welfare
would suggest that we should bring about World 2, because only that world is more
conducive, all else being equal, to an equal distribution of opportunity for welfare.
But this is counterintuitive because everyone is worse off, opportunity-wise, in
30
There are, it should be pointed out, certain social policies targeting adults that are justified by FEO3
directly (as opposed to indirectly via compensatory justice): to ensure that at a given moment in time a
group of equally-talented individuals have equal opportunity it is necessary to ensure that no identifiable
subset of that group faces future discrimination.
31
Leisure time might itself be an element of welfare, but this is compatible with its being a determinant
of opportunity for welfare. We can say both that simply having free time is good in itself and that having
free time gives one the opportunity to engage in activities that are conducive to welfare.
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B. Sachs
World 1
A
B
World 2
A
B
Fig. 1 Two possible distributions of leisure time
World 2. It appears that the principle of equality of opportunity for welfare has an
unacceptable implication.
This is an instance of the well-known leveling down objection to egalitarianism,
so-named because it points out that in certain situations, such as the one depicted in
Fig. 1, egalitarian ideals require forcing everyone down to a lower level. This, of
course, does not imply that every theorist who endorses an egalitarian principle
must, on pain of inconsistency, accept this implication. Egalitarians can be pluralists
and believe that in cases like these, egalitarian principles are overridden. They are
forced only to accept that there is a reason to level down. But this, too, seems
wrong.
4.2 A first response to the leveling down objection
It is worth considering how someone who advocates FEO might respond to the
objection. Such a theorist might chalk it up to a misunderstanding of what equality
of opportunity is. This response is invited by a passage from Norman Daniels’s Just
Health in which he claims of fair equality of opportunity that
[t]he fair equality of opportunity account does not require us to level all
differences among persons in their share of the normal opportunity range.
Rather, opportunity is equal for the purposes of the account when certain
impediments to opportunity are eliminated for all persons…32
Daniels seems to suggest that ‘‘equality of opportunity’’ is a metaphorical way of
talking about the removal of various barriers to opportunity.33 It is even possible
that Rawls himself intended the same thing by equality of opportunity. After all,
when Rawls first introduces FEO, he characterizes it the following way:
32
2008, p. 60.
33
It is also open to Daniels to say that one’s level of opportunity for X just is the extent to which there
are barriers in the way of one’s pursuit of X. Alan Goldman, for instance, seems to want to say this
(Goldman 1987). But such a view is implausible; certainly one’s level of opportunity to obtain X depends
not only on barriers but also on one’s capabilities.
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The limits of fair equality of opportunity
337
The expectations of those with the same abilities and aspirations should not be
affected by their social class.34
If one reads this sentence in its context in A Theory of Justice, one gets the
impression that for Rawls the absence of barriers is not an entailment of fair equality
of opportunity but rather is fair equality of opportunity.
If, as these passages suggest, fair equality of opportunity is to be spelled out as a
requirement that certain barriers to opportunity be removed, then the leveling down
objection is avoided. If nothing is supposed to be equalized, then there is no
argument in favor of moving from World 1 to World 2. This strategy, however,
comes at the cost of undermining FEO’s usefulness as a theoretical basis for social
policies. What makes FEO an appealing premise from which to build arguments for
social policies is that it seems to reflect two ideals that a variety of people—all
liberals, in the wide sense—are committed to: liberalism and egalitarianism. (See
Sect. 3 for an explanation of how those ideals can be combined to yield a version of
FEO.) If, starting from a commitment to a version of FEO that reflects those two
ideals, we could infer, say, that educational barriers should be removed, and next
conclude, perhaps, that there should be universal publicly-sponsored primary and
secondary education, then we would have made an argument worth making. But in
order to ensure that the first step is not a mere tautology, we cannot define equality
of opportunity as a requirement to remove certain barriers to the attainment of
opportunity.35
4.3 A second response to the leveling down objection
Alternatively, we might attempt to undermine the intuition that drives the leveling
down objection, by showing that there sometimes is a reason to level down. One
way to do this is to argue that that inequality is intrinsically bad under certain
circumstances. Larry Temkin, for instance, constructs a diagram like the one in
Fig. 1 and asks us to suppose that the members of Group A are Sinners and the
members of Group B are Saints, and the height of each column represents wellbeing. World 1 is supposed to represent a situation of undeserved inequality; the
Sinners, who by definition do not deserve to be well-off, are better-off than the
Saints. Temkin expects his audience to have the intuition that World 2 is better in
some respect than World 1 despite the fact that World 2 is a leveled down world.
What he takes this to show is that sometimes inequality is bad (or that we are
committed to thinking that it is). To be precise, it is bad when it is undeserved.36
This, of course, makes inequality’s badness contingent on the presence of
34
(1971, p. 73).
35
One might argue that Rawls did not start from a commitment to FEO. One might believe that for
Rawls FEO is a true principle of justice because it would be selected in the original position. I have no
argument against this interpretation of Rawls. Notice, however, that this interpretation of Rawls strips
FEO of its independent moral force. If the parties to the original position would choose FEO, then they
would also choose whatever social policies follow from FEO, if only they had the information necessary
to figure that out. Ultimately, then, those policies would be justified by whatever justifies the original
position.
36
Temkin (1993, chap. 9; 2002).
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B. Sachs
proportional injustice. So when there is inequality but no proportional injustice,
inequality is not bad. But Temkin accepts this implication.37
Temkin is just one example; there are also egalitarians who don’t hold that
inequality is bad but nevertheless argue that there is sometimes a reason to avoid
it.38 The details of the various arguments are not important, however, since all of
these egalitarians are egalitarians about welfare or resources. What we need to know
is whether there might sometimes be a reason to avoid inequality of opportunity.
Well, why is it that various theorists advocate of equality of opportunity? For the
most part, they claim to be moved by the ideal of a level playing field—a situation in
which everyone has a fair chance to obtain certain goods.39 I’m moved by it too; in fact,
I think that the ideal of a level playing field perfectly describes the balance between
liberalism and egalitarianism that FEO3 is supposed to embody (see Sect. 3).
However, there appear to be some goods for which there is no playing field—
goods for which there is no competition. This being the case, the level playing field
ideal only sometimes favors equalization of opportunity. For instance, some of the
components of welfare, such as, perhaps, happiness and knowledge, are such that
one person can under certain circumstances gain more of it without thereby
depriving someone else of it. This aspect of welfare reveals why in our earlier
thought experiment we did not see any reason to equalize opportunity for welfare.
Similarly, in Sect. 3 we rejected the notion that we should equalize opportunity to
not starve and to be literate. These, too, are goods for which there need not be any
competition. By contrast, there does seem to be a reason to equalize opportunity for
jobs and offices. There is competition for these things, and so fairness appears to
favor leveling the playing field on which they are pursued, even if that means
leveling down. Thus, we have a successful partial response to the leveling down
objection to FEO. Yes, FEO requires leveling down, but in some cases there really
is a reason to level down the distribution of opportunity.
4.4 Implications of the successful partial response to the leveling
down objection
We have found a reason favoring equalizing the distribution of opportunity for
competitive goods, but found no reason favoring equalizing the distribution of
opportunity for non-competitive goods. Since FEO requires leveling down, we
should restrict its currency to opportunities whose distribution there is a reason to
level down. This suggests that the currency of FEO should be ‘‘opportunity for
certain competitive goods.’’ However, there is a different term we might use that
would help to situate our discussion within the broader debate about egalitarianism.
I suggest that we say instead that the currency is certain positional opportunities,
where ‘positional opportunity’ is defined as an opportunity whose likelihood for one
37
Temkin (2003, p. 767). For other defenses of the idea that inequality is sometimes bad, see LippertRasmussen (2007), Mason (2001, pp. 248–249).
38
Such egalitarians include: Wolff (2001), Norman (1998, p. 51), Scanlon (2002, pp. 42–47), Christiano
(2007, Persson 2007), Miller (1998).
39
Rawls (1971, p. 73), Jacobs (2004, esp. p. 14), Goldman (1987, p. 88), Roemer (2000, pp. 1–2),
Fishkin (1983), Mason (2006).
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The limits of fair equality of opportunity
339
person cannot be altered without the likelihood of that same opportunity for another
person being simultaneously altered in the other direction (in other words, it’s an
opportunity you can’t make more of; all you can do is put yourself in a better
position with respect to the opportunity that’s already there).40 Necessarily, among
opportunities all and only those opportunities that are for competitive goods have
this quality. If A is in competition for some good, A’s success in securing a better
opportunity to obtain that good necessarily comes at the expense of reducing
someone else’s opportunity to obtain the good. To use a classic example, a high
school student’s success in obtaining a high S.A.T. score gives him a better
opportunity to obtain a desirable place in college only to the extent that other
students in his cohort get a worse score and thereby suffer a reduced opportunity to
obtain a desirable place. On the other hand, when the good in question is
noncompetitive an individual can augment her opportunity to obtain the good while
everyone else’s opportunity level remains static.
Before affirming that we have correctly answered the currency question, we
should ensure that our answer avoids the leveling down objection. Refer back to
Fig. 1. Originally, we assumed that the height of the columns represented leisure
time. The objection was that while fair equality of opportunity for welfare favored
leveling down from World 1 to World 2, there did not seem to be any reason at all to
do so. Now assume that the height of the columns represents access to S.A.T. prep
classes. This being the case, fair equality of opportunity for jobs and offices, which
is FEO with a positional currency, favors leveling down from World 1 to World 2.
This implication is intuitively acceptable. Many of us believe that there is a reason
to equalize access to S.A.T. prep classes, even if this means reducing everyone’s
access by banning such classes.
Not surprisingly, the response to the leveling down objection at which we have
arrived in defense of fair equality of opportunity is the same as a well-known
response to the leveling down objection employed by proponents of equality of
welfare or equality of resources. This response, brought to prominence by Harry
Brighouse and Adam Swift, is the claim that the currency of egalitarian justice is
positional goods.41 So I am merely pointing out that what is true of equality of
welfare or resources is true of fair equality of opportunity: the leveling down
objection applies,42 and evading it requires adopting a positional currency. This is
an important point, because accounts of fair equality of opportunity that have a nonpositional currency are still currently popular.
I have argued in this section that to avoid the leveling down objection, FEO must
have certain positional opportunity(ies) as its currency. There are two problems with
this conclusion. First, it is incomplete; it does not specify which positional
opportunities are to be distributed equally. However, since my overall goal is simply
to demonstrate that a plausible version of FEO must be narrow in certain specifiable
40
My answer to the currency question is the same as the answer at which Lesley Jacobs arrives (without
ever considering the leveling down objection). Jacobs contends that we ought to equalize the distribution
of competitive opportunities (2004, pp. 21–29), where ‘competitive opportunity’ is defined the same way
I have defined ‘positional opportunity.’
41
Brighouse and Swift (2006).
42
As noted in Richards (1998, p. 70).
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B. Sachs
ways, I will not go on to discuss just which positional opportunity(ies) should be
distributed equally. The narrowness thesis is advanced enough merely in showing
that there are a wide range of opportunities that a plausible version of FEO tells us
nothing about how to distribute.
The second problem is that among those opportunities whose distribution may be
properly subjected to social control there might not be any that are positional.
Consider, for instance, opportunity for desirable jobs and offices. There are ways to
augment everyone’s opportunity for desirable jobs and offices; for instance, we can
enact policies that promote economic growth. (Of course, it remains true that there
are other policies we could enact that would augment such opportunity for some
people while reducing it for others. For example, we could prohibit private
schooling.) Thus, opportunity for desirable jobs and offices is not positional (though
it has positional aspects).
This suggests that the scope of fair equality of opportunity is even narrower than
I have thus far made it out to be. I have argued that the principle regulates only the
distribution of positional opportunities, but it turns out that there might not be any—
or, at least, any that that are appropriate objects of social policy.
There is more to the story, however. Even if a certain opportunity is not
positional, it may yet be positional-for-practical-purposes. For instance, we may
believe that we should try to increase everyone’s opportunity for jobs and offices. If
we do, then we will enact policies that promote this goal, such as policies promoting
economic growth. There may come a point, however, where we have done all we
can along these lines. At this point, opportunity for jobs and offices becomes
positional-for-practical-purposes, in that everything we can actually do to alter the
distribution of such opportunity, such as enacting a ban on private schooling, will be
zero-sum. I would suggest that if an opportunity is positional-for-practical-purposes,
then it is just as much an appropriate object of an egalitarian principle as positional
opportunities are.
4.5 Implications of a positional currency
Now that we have verified our answer to the currency question, we are ready to
issue a revised FEO3 with the currency variable filled in:
FEO4: Certain positional opportunity(ies) should be equal at the age of majority
among the equally talented.
The fact that the most plausible version of FEO is targeted specifically at positional
opportunities has profound implications for the usefulness of fair equality of
opportunity for justifying social policies. Take, for instance, universal health care.
In his argument for universal health care, Daniels departs from Rawls, who
advocated a version of FEO that was concerned with the opportunity for (desirable)
jobs and offices.43 Daniels is well-aware of this departure, and defends it on the
43
It is worth noting, though, that while Rawls’s official position on FEO is that we ought to equalize
opportunity for (desirable) jobs and offices, he often speaks as if the currency is much broader. On page
73 of A Theory of Justice, for instance, he portrays FEO as concerning ‘‘life chances,’’ ‘‘prospects of
success’’ and ‘‘prospects for culture and achievement.’’
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The limits of fair equality of opportunity
341
grounds that it is necessary in order to avoid a major problem. If our concern is just
the maintenance of each individual’s opportunity to obtain (desirable) jobs and
offices then we have no reason to provide health care to those whose productive
years are behind them and those who cannot be brought to productive capacity.44 So
instead of universal health care, we get health care for everyone except, most likely,
the elderly and the severely disabled. Daniels avoids this problem by employing a
version of FEO on which we are directed to equalize the distribution of opportunity
for the achievement of a plan of life (among the equally talented and motivated).45
But if we insist, as I have argued we should, that FEO address only the distribution
of positional opportunities, then this move cannot be made, since many elements of
a plan of life, such as parenthood, are not competitive goods (and thus the
opportunities for them are non-positional).46 Daniels, of course, might be able to
find a currency that both abides by the positionality requirement and grounds health
care for the elderly and severely disabled. Until he does so, however, his argument
for universal health care is on shaky ground.47
5 Conclusion
I have argued in this article that the best interpretation of fair equality of opportunity
is
FEO4: Certain positional opportunity(ies) should be equal at the age of majority
among the equally talented.
This principle can be used to justify only those social policies that seek to
equalize positional opportunities among people entering majority. This is why, as I
claimed at the outset, FEO will ground only those social policies that are similar, in
specifiable ways, to the policies for which Rawls used FEO: universal public
education and a tax on inheritance. Both policies target children, and both education
and inheritances are things the possession of which can augment a young adult’s
opportunity to obtain certain competitive goods, most notably positions in elite
colleges and universities.48
44
(2008, p. 60).
45
Daniels does not make his principle of fair equality of opportunity explicit. My interpretation is based
on his latest work, Just Health, and I defend it in Sachs (2010).
46
A criticism along these lines was first made in Segall (2007).
47
I go into more detail about this in Sachs (2010).
48
Did Rawls recognize the limits of FEO, or was it mere coincidence that the two social policies he
advocated on the basis of FEO conform to those limits? Surprisingly, the latter appears to be the case.
Consider again that key passage from A Theory of Justice in which he first introduces FEO.
[T]hose who are at the same level of talent and ability, and have the same willingness to use them,
should have the same prospects of success regardless of their initial place in the social system, that
is, irrespective of the income class into which they are born….The expectations of those with the
same abilities and aspirations should not be affected by their social class. (1971, p. 73)
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B. Sachs
Consequently, if we are interested in justifying other social policies, such as
unemployment benefits, adult education/job training programs and certain kinds of
affirmative action program, then we need a new strategy. One strategy would be to
defend these policies as a matter of compensatory justice for our failure to secure
FEO. This defense would be limited, however, as it would imply that the only
proper beneficiaries of such policies are those adults whose opportunity set was
smaller at the age of majority. A more ambitious strategy would be to appeal to
some other principle(s) of justice. Since some of these social policies, including the
last two of the three on the above list, seem to have as their goal the redistribution of
opportunities, we should search specifically for opportunity-based principles. In
general, two of the main alternatives to egalitarianism are prioritarianism and
sufficientarianism, so I suggest that we consider the defensibility of opportunitybased versions of these principles.49
Acknowledgments This research was supported by an intramural postdoctoral fellowship in the
Department of Bioethics at the Warren G. Magnuson Clinical Center, National Institutes of Health. The
ideas contained in this article were presented before audiences there and also at Texas Tech University
and Queen’s University. I would like to thank Joe Millum, Alan Wertheimer and Ori Lev for helpful
conversation on the topic and for reading previous drafts of the article.
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Ackerman, B., & Alstott, A. (2010). The stakeholder society. New Haven, CT: The Yale University Press.
Arneson, R. J. (1989). Equality and equal opportunity for welfare. Philosophical Studies, 56, 77–93.
Brighouse, H., & Swift, A. (2006). Equality, priority, and positional goods. Ethics, 116(3), 471–497.
Brown, A. (2006). Access to educational opportunities—one-off or lifelong? Journal of Philosophy of
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Footnote 48 continued
Here, Rawls says first that individuals’ opportunity should be equal ‘‘regardless of their initial place in the
social system, that is, irrespective of the income class into which they are born,’’ and then asserts, ‘‘The
expectations of those with the same abilities and aspirations should not be affected by their social class.’’
These two claims are quite different. One says that opportunity level should not be affected by the social
class of one’s birth, while the other says that opportunity level should not be affected by one’s social class
(full stop, presumably). The unexplained slide from the former claim to the latter suggests that Rawls
believed that from the perspective of fair equality of opportunity, it’s all the same. But this, as we’ve seen,
is not true.
49
Almost nothing has been written on this subject. An exception is Andrew Mason’s discussion of
equality of opportunity, in which he explicitly incorporates some elements of a sufficiency view into the
principle of equality of opportunity (2006, chap. 5). The closest one finds to a clear defense of sufficiency
of opportunity is Cavanagh (2003), in which Matt Cavanagh argues that instead of aiming to allocate
opportunities for jobs equally we should allocate them so as to ensure that each person has a decent range
of choices and thus some control over her life. This sounds like a version of sufficiency of opportunity,
and indeed Cavanagh at one point describes it that way (p. 140). It also sounds like something that Rawls,
after A Theory of Justice, often included on his list of social primary goods: freedom of movement and
free choice of occupation against a background of diverse opportunities.
Meanwhile, even less has been said about priority of opportunity. Commenting on a section of A
Theory of Justice in which Rawls appears to reformulate his ‘fair equality of opportunity’ as a version of
priority of opportunity (§46), Thomas Pogge argues that such a reformulation is actually a better fit within
Rawls’s overall theory of justice (1989, p. 170).
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Buchanan, A., Brock, D. W., Daniels, N., & Wikler, D. (2000). From chance to choice: Genetics and
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Cavanagh, M. (2003). Against equality of opportunity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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opportunity. Politics, Philosophy & Economics, 8(4), 374–400.
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