Abstract
Today, morally arbitrary chance dominates the distribution of economic resources. How ought we morally assess an individual who is morally responsible for an outcome when that outcome is, to some extent, governed by pure chance? Chapter 2 begins by offering a theory of moral responsibility, a necessary precondition to a theory of desert. Highlighting the importance of the control principle, it turns out that for multiple theories of moral responsibility, circumstances are the key to understanding moral assessments of an individual. Arguing that moral responsibility is always contrastive and partial, I then defend against some objections.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Rawls (1999 (1971)), 87; Sadurski (1985), 122–131.
- 2.
- 3.
Wolff (2003), 222.
- 4.
- 5.
Parthemore and Whitby (2013).
- 6.
- 7.
We might refer to these latter two types of statements as moral responsibility and object responsibility statements and, together, they constitute the class of empirical responsibility statements. Note that Fischer and Ravizza use causal responsibility instead of object responsibility. They also usefully point out that moral responsibility is not to be confused with legal responsibility, corporate responsibility, role responsibility, and so on. Fischer and Ravizza (1998), 1–2.
- 8.
Hurley (2003), 92; From a more juridical perspective, Hart speaks of “liability responsibility.” Hart (1968), 215–227; As an aside, I must note that I do not use accountability in Bok’s sense, that is, to hold accountable is not to “take some action to reflect [an individual’s] will, attribute it to [the individual], and ask what it reveals about [the individual’s] will and character, and about the ways [that will and character] might be improved.” Bok (1998), 152.
- 9.
This is the “ledger view” of moral responsibility. Fischer and Ravizza (1998), 8–10n12.
- 10.
Strawson (1962).
- 11.
Arneson (2003), 236.
- 12.
This libertarianism should not be confused with the political philosophy of self-ownership to be discussed later in the book.
- 13.
Smart (1973), 54.
- 14.
Smilansky (2000).
- 15.
Taylor (2003).
- 16.
Ruse (2003).
- 17.
Pereboom (2003).
- 18.
Barry (1965), 112.
- 19.
Unfortunately, both the claim that determinism is true and its opposite are unfalsifiable. Strawson (1994), 20.
- 20.
Fischer and Ravizza (1998), 11.
- 21.
Daniels (1996).
- 22.
Rawls (1985), 238.
- 23.
Williams (1981).
- 24.
I am not asking you to examine your beliefs with respect to legal liability. While “strict liability” or “absolute liability” might treat Chris and Ryan identically, morality comes before the law, and I want you to consider the empirically descriptive, backward-looking, moral responsibility of our drivers, not their legal liabilities.
- 25.
Nozick (2013).
- 26.
Nagel (1979), 24.
- 27.
Pereboom (2003), 29.
- 28.
“[M]ost substantive moral theories hold agents morally accountable only for that for which they are agent-responsible [attributively responsible]...” Vallentyne (2008); “Morals constitute a kind of internal law, governing those inner thoughts and volitions which are completely subject to the agent’s control... where the agent rules supreme and luck has no place.” Feinberg (1970e), 33, “If we charge [individuals] with the consequences of fortuitous events [i.e., chance], the [“moral”] records will lose their accuracy and fail, accordingly, to achieve their purpose.” Feinberg (1970a), 125; For a rare exception, cf. Scanlon (2000), chap. 6.
- 29.
Arneson (2004); Nelkin (2013); Also, this is a non-egalitarian reformulation of Cohen’s point, “...egalitarian redress is indicated to the extent that a disadvantage does not reflect genuine choice.” Cohen (2011d); Due to its strong support by egalitarians when individuals are disadvantaged due to factors beyond their control, Lake names minor variations on this principle the “egalitarian intuition” or the “responsibility principle.” Lake (2001), 12–13; “An action is free in the sense required for moral responsibility only if it is not produced by a deterministic process that traces back to causal factors beyond the agent’s control.” Pereboom (2003), 3; also cf. 126; Note that this definition of control is of categorical control (what Hurley names regressive control) Hurley (2003), 111 that is thicker than Hurley’s account in which “[Simple] Control … involves maintenance of a variable at a target value in the face of exogenous disturbance, where the variable is caused to take values jointly by factors endogenous and factors exogenous to a control system [Dwyer’s italics].” Hurley (2003), 95. Instead, control means caused to take values exclusively by endogenous factors.
- 30.
Arneson (2007), 269.
- 31.
Eastwood (1992).
- 32.
Lewis and Short (1879), s.v. com-pŏs (conp-), pŏtis, potis, def 1.
- 33.
Feinberg (1970g), 274.
- 34.
Strawson (1962).
- 35.
Fischer and Ravizza (1998), 8.
- 36.
Fischer and Ravizza (1998), 28–41.
- 37.
Fischer and Ravizza (1998), 4.
- 38.
Note that Nagel refers to resultant, circumstantial, causal, and constitutive luck. I have chosen terms that both comprehend Nagel’s framework and more clearly distinguish themselves to non-philosophers.
- 39.
Singer (1972).
- 40.
Cf. “a paralysing and insurmountable fear of heights...” Olsaretti (2003a), 202; “a person who resolutely masters his fear in order to rescue someone,...” Sher (1987), 135; “Certain sorts of mental disorders—extreme phobias, for instance—may also issue in behavior that the agent does not control in the relevant sense.” Fischer and Ravizza (1998), 35.
- 41.
Wallace (1998), 12.
- 42.
This is a variation on a villain in the Batman mythology. Kane and Finger (1942).
- 43.
Lake (2001), 23.
- 44.
While it may raise a number of unnecessary new issues, some readers might find an analogy between Two-Face as cursed human and Two-Face as deterministic computer program revealing. Cf. Noorman (2012).
- 45.
“Merit spans both the moral and the nonmoral realms.” Sher (1987), 109; “Indeed, our Strawsonian view of moral responsibility allows for moral responsibility for ‘morally neutral’ behavior. For instance, one can be morally responsible for simply raising one’s hand (where this is not a signal or in any way morally significant).” Fischer and Ravizza (1998), 5n5, 8n11.
- 46.
Note that this leaves two options for Arneson, either “character” or “disposition” is autonomous effort or it is a vector of outcomes toward which one exhibits autonomous effort. Arneson (2007).
- 47.
Feinberg (1970a), 149.
- 48.
I find this a more felicitous phrase than “autonomous action.” Sher (1987), 37.
- 49.
Miller makes a similar claim vis a vis desert when considering the case of “a cowardly man [who] performs a courageous deed,” stating, “Indeed, [] we may even regard the merit of the action as increased by its atypical character...” with respect to circumstances of chance. Miller (1999a), 139n1.
- 50.
This is a key, and often confused, point. At this stage, I will leave it as a puzzling metaphysical statement but note simply that it does nothing to change our non-ideal policy prescription. Cf. Roemer (1998), 8–12.
- 51.
Cappelen et al. (2010).
- 52.
Locke (1997 (1689)), sec. 13.
- 53.
And vice versa again for the above four statements when considering bad outcomes.
- 54.
Taylor (2003), 15–16.
- 55.
For a brief review of the public policy discussions of adolescent brain development, cf. Steinberg (2013).
- 56.
Technically, “most similarly situated” does not mean that the only individuals who could offer relevant information to our assessment of a 55-year-old female are other 55-year-old females. This is a weakness of Roemer’s proposal that leads to undesirable and unnecessary mathematical and theoretical complications as I will discuss in great detail below. Roemer (1998).
- 57.
Arneson (2007), 265.
- 58.
“For in any case it does not seem possible to separate in practice that part of a man’s achievement which is due strictly to his free choice from that part which is due to the original gift of nature and to favouring circumstances...” Sidgwick (1999), 53; “Indeed, in arguing that one very basic question about deserts for work seems unresolvable, I have made it plain that I can offer no practical scheme for justly distributing goods in society.” Slote (1999), 217, Slote (1973), “Certainly, it would be extremely difficult to separate the voluntary from the non-voluntary... and so to tell which of a man’s qualities were proper grounds for desert. Perhaps the revised principle for ascribing good desert would be impossible to use in practice.” Miller (1999a), 137, Miller (1976).
- 59.
For example, Fishkin (2014), sec. II.B.3.
- 60.
In this way, Outcome Y is not a “fallible marker for [responsibility, but its] necessary condition.” Wolff (2003), 221.
- 61.
Circumstances of chance are thus synonymous with Hurley’s “thin luck.” Hurley (2003), 107ff.
- 62.
Formally, we could write, P(AE = α𝜖 i|CC = CC i) = P(AE = α𝜖 i) for discrete random variables or f AE(α𝜖 i|CC = CC i) = f AE(α𝜖 i) for continuous random variables.
- 63.
This is important as Vallentyne considered partial responsibility underdeveloped in moral philosophy. “In particular, the issue of partial responsibility for an outcome (rather than it being all or nothing) needs further development.” Vallentyne (2008); for a comprehensive and detailed account of partial freedom, cf. Boeninger (2011).
- 64.
I think this seriously threatens Hurley’s argument that a “regressive account of responsibility” is not coherently compatible with causal (e.g., choice or control) conceptions of responsibility. Hurley (2003), 24–28.
- 65.
Given this exclusive, exhaustive, independence, I think that Sher’s argument loses its critical force. Sher (2003).
- 66.
This may be viewed as an extension or corollary of the control principle. Arneson (2004), 3.
- 67.
- 68.
Indeed, most philosophers have started with the intuition that a moral agent who is agent responsible must exhibit these two conditions. Aristotle (1999), sec. III.1–5.
- 69.
Young (2016), 967–68.
- 70.
Cf. Latus (2000).
- 71.
“There is an irreducible margin of vagueness in the legal concept of responsibility which often leads courts to mechanically apply admittedly arbitrary rules... to cases in which [the true extent of agent] responsibility is essentially uncertain but which require that ‘a line be drawn somewhere’ [Dwyer’s italics].” Feinberg (1970e), 26.
- 72.
The fact that Feinberg does not believe such deep responsibility is possible does nothing to diminish the excellence of the definition thereof. Feinberg (1970e), 32.
- 73.
Strawson (1994), 8–9.
- 74.
Wetzel (2014).
- 75.
I think Feinberg’s analyses superb, yet they often allow the legal perspective to override the pre-institutional perspective. For example, see the search for “the cause” of some event. Feinberg (1970a), 142–144.
- 76.
Fischer and Ravizza (1998), 80.
- 77.
- 78.
Cf. “Erosion” and “Erosion*,” respectively. Fischer and Ravizza (1998), 157–169.
- 79.
Pereboom (2003), 54.
- 80.
Just as dark glasses might impair one’s capacity to see a doorway in a dark room without the dark glasses doing harm to one’s eyes’ and brain’s capacity to process visual stimuli, human cognitive biases might impair one’s capacity to exhibit rational observed outcomes of interest without harming the moral agent’s capacity to ratiocinate. Hurley (2011).
- 81.
I think Campbell overstates the strength of the predictability argument and thus their tactic to avoid it. Campbell (2003), 58–59.
- 82.
In this way, Fischer and Ravizza’s three-part analysis of strong reasons-responsiveness collapses to one single element: there are never failures in the connection between what reasons there are and what reasons the agent recognizes, nor between the agent’s reasons and their choice. There are only failures in the connection between choice and action. Fischer and Ravizza (1998), 41–46.
- 83.
Roemer (1998), 21.
- 84.
Pace Sher, while it may seem to be “a piece of bad luck” that some must “exert more of what looks a lot like effort to [exert] the same amount of effort,” we shall not be fooled into believing that what looks like effort (observed outcomes of interest) is indeed effort (autonomous effort). Sher (2003), 210.
- 85.
It is immaterial whether the neurochemical is assumed to be an actual representation of autonomous effort or merely a correlate, and therefore proxy or surrogate measure.
- 86.
As an individual’s autonomous effort is independent of all circumstances of chance, this completely dismisses Persson’s problem mentioned by Arneson. Arneson (2007), 285.
- 87.
- 88.
Rawls (1999 (1971)), 64.
- 89.
For an argument against at least Rawls’ “uncritical assumption that people differ in effort-making abilities,” cf. Sher (1987), 28–30.
- 90.
Rawls (1999 (1971)), 274.
- 91.
Miller (1999c), 276n20.
- 92.
Olsaretti (2003b), 13–14.
- 93.
Cohen (2011d), 12.
- 94.
Temkin (2011), 75.
- 95.
To be explicit, I am arguing that there is only one distribution of autonomous effort for all moral agents throughout all time and space. This is an important point that extricates us from the mathematical difficulties of different autonomous effort distributions across types. As Roemer states it, “...if we could somehow disembody individuals from their circumstances, then the distribution of the propensity to exert effort would be the same in every type.” Roemer (1998), 15.
- 96.
Hart and Honoré (1959).
- 97.
Feinberg (1970b), 157.
- 98.
Nagel (1979), 35.
- 99.
Strawson (1962).
- 100.
- 101.
“A good will is not good because of what it effects or accomplishes, because of its fitness to attain some proposed end, but only because of its volition, that is, it is good in itself… Even if, by a special disfavor of fortune or by the niggardly provision of a stepmotherly nature [circumstances of chance], this will should wholly lack the capacity to carry out its purpose—if with its greatest efforts it should yet achieve nothing and only the good will were left (not, of course, as a mere wish but as the summoning of all means insofar as they are in our control)—then, like a jewel, it would still shine by itself, as something that has its full worth in itself. Usefulness or fruitlessness can neither add anything to this worth nor take anything away from it.” Kant (1993 (1784)), 4.
References
26 U.S. Code § 63 - Taxable Income Defined. 2000.
Aaberge, Rolf, Magne Mogstad, and Vitorocco Peragine. 2011. Measuring Long-Term Inequality of Opportunity. Journal of Public Economics 95 (3): 193–204.
Abramovitz, Mimi. 1996. Regulating the Lives of Women: Social Welfare Policy from Colonial Times to the Present. Boston, MA: South End Press.
Adler, Matthew. 2011. Well-Being and Fair Distribution: Beyond Cost-Benefit Analysis. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Allaire, J.J., et al. 2018. rmarkdown: Dynamic Documents for R. R package version 1.11.
Almås, Ingvild, et al. 2011. Measuring Unfair (in)Equality. Journal of Public Economics 95 (7–8): 488–499.
Alperovitz, Gar, and Lew Daly. 2008. Unjust Deserts: How the Rich Are Taking Our Common Inheritance and Why We Should Take It Back. New York, NY: The New Press.
Alstott, Anne, and Bruce A. Ackerman. 1999. The Stakeholder Society. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Anderson, Elizabeth. 1999. What Is the Point of Equality? Ethics 109 (2): 287–337.
Anderson, Elizabeth. 2015. The Fundamental Disagreement Between Luck Egalitarians and Relational Egalitarians. In Distributive Justice and Access to Advantage: G. A. Cohen’s Egalitarianism, ed. Alexander Kaufman, 21–39. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Aristotle. 1999. Nicomachean Ethics. 2nd ed. Trans. Terence Irwin. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.
Arneson, Richard J. 1989. Equality and Equal Opportunity for Welfare. Philosophical Studies 56 (1): 77–93.
Arneson, Richard J. 1990. Liberalism, Distributive Subjectivism, and Equal Opportunity for Welfare. Philosophy & Public Affairs 19 (2): 158–194.
Arneson, Richard J. 2003. The Smart Theory of Moral Responsibility. In Desert and Justice, ed. Serena Olsaretti, 233–258. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Arneson, Richard J. 2004. Luck Egalitarianism Interpreted and Defended. Philosophical Topics 32 (1/2): 1–20.
Arneson, Richard J. 2007. Desert and Equality. In Egalitarianism: New Essays on the Nature and Value of Equality, ed. Nils Holtug and Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen, 262–293. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Atkinson, Anthony Barnes. 2015. Inequality. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Atkinson, Anthony Barnes, and Joseph E. Stiglitz. 1980. Lectures on Public Economics. Maidenhead: McGraw-Hill.
Baker, Michael, and Gary Solon. 1999. Earnings Dynamics and Inequality Among Canadian Men, 1976–1992: Evidence from Longitudinal Income Tax Records. Working Paper 7370. NBER - National Bureau of Economic Research.
Barrett, Malcolm. 2018. ggdag: Analyze and Create Elegant Directed Acyclic Graphs. R package version 0.1.0.
Barry, Brian. 1965. Political Argument. New York, NY: Humanities Press.
Barry, Brian. 1991. Liberty and Justice: Essays in Political Theory. Vol. 2. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
BEA - Bureau of Economic Analysis. 2015. Table 6.6D. Wages and Salaries Per Full-Time Equivalent Employee by Industry. http://bea.gov/iTable/iTable.cfm?reqid=9&step=1#reqid=9&step=3&isuri=1&904=2005&903=201&906=q&905=2014&910=x&911=0.
Becker, Gary S. 1988. Family Economics and Macro Behavior. American Economic Review 78: 1–13.
Beckert, Jens. 2008. Inherited Wealth. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Bedau, Hugo. 1967. Radical Egalitarianism. In Nomos IX, ed. R. Pennock and J. Chapman, 3–27. Palo Alto, CA: Atherton Press
Behrman, Jere R., and Paul Tarbman. 1985. Intergenerational Earnings Mobility in the United States: Some Estimates and a Test of Becker’s Intergenerational Endowments Model. The Review of Economics and Statistics 67 (1): 144–151.
Benshalom, Ilan, and Kendra Stead. 2010. Values and (Market) Valuations: A Critique of the Endowment Tax Consensus. Northwestern University Law Review 104 (4): 1511–1558.
Benus, Jacob, and James N. Morgan. 1975. Time Period, Unit of Analysis, and Income Concept in the Analysis of Income Distribution. In The Personal Distribution of Income and Wealth. National Bureau of Economic Research Studies in Income and Wealth, ed. James D. Smith, vol. 39. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.
Björklund, Anders, Markus Jäntti, and John E. Roemer. 2011. Equality of Opportunity and the Distribution of Long-Run Income in Sweden. Discussion Paper 5466. Bonn: Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit (IZA).
BLS - Bureau of Labor Statistics. 2014. Employer Costs for Employee Compensation. http://www.bls.gov/news.release/ecec.nr0.htm.
BLS - Bureau of Labor Statistics. 2015. National Compensation Measures. In Handbook of Methods. Washington, DC: BLS - Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Boeninger, Brian Pocock. 2011. Partial Freedom and Degrees of Moral Responsibility: The Metaphysics of Influence and Libertarianism. Ph.D., University of Notre Dame.
Bok, Hilary. 1998. Freedom and Responsibility. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Bourguignon, Francois, Francisco H. G. Ferreira, and Michael Walton. 2007. Equity, Efficiency and Inequality Traps: A Research Agenda. Journal of Economic Inequality 5: 235–256.
Bowles, Samuel, Herbert Gintis, and Melissa Osborne. 2001. The Determinants of Earnings: A Behavioral Approach. Journal of Economic Literature 39: 1137–1176.
Bowles, Samuel, Herbert Gintis, and Melissa Osborne Groves. 2005a. Introduction. In Unequal Chances: Family Background and Economic Success, ed. Samuel Bowles, Herbert Gintis, and Melissa Osborne Groves, 1–22. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Bowles, Samuel, Herbert Gintis, and Melissa Osborne Groves, eds. 2005b. Unequal Chances: Family Background and Economic Success. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Bradford, David F. 1984. Blueprints for Basic Tax Reform. 2nd ed. Arlington, VA: Tax Analysts.
Brandolini, Andrea. 1992. Nonlinear Dynamics, Entitlement Rules and the Cyclical Behaviour of the Personal Income Distribution. Discussion Paper 84. Centre for Economic Performance, London School of Economics and Political Science.
Brault, Matthew W. 2012. Americans with Disabilites: 2010. Report P70-131. Washington, DC: US Census Bureau.
Bredgaard, Thomas, and Arthur Daemmrich. 2012. The Welfare State as a Growth Strategy: Denmark, Flexicurity, and the Politics of Globalization. http://ilera2012.wharton.upenn.edu/RefereedPapers/BredgaardThomas%20ArthurDaemmrich.pdf.
Brody, Baruch. 2000. Redistribution without Egalitarianism. In Left-Libertarianism and Its Critics: The Contemporary Debate, ed. Peter Vallentyne and Hillel Steiner, 31–47. New York, NY: Palgrave.
Campbell, C. A. 2003. Has the Self Free Will? In Freedom, Determinism, and Responsibility: Readings in Metaphysics, ed. Neil Campbell, 49–63. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Cappelen, Alexander W., Erik Ø. Sørensen, and Bertil Tungodden. 2010. Responsibility for What? Fairness and Individual Responsibility. European Economic Review 54 (3): 429–441.
Card, David, and John E. DiNardo. 2002. Technology and US Wage Inequality: A Brief Look. Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta Economic Review 87 (3): 45–62.
Carens, Joseph H. 2015. The Egalitarian Ethos as a Social Mechanism. In Distributive Justice and Access to Advantage: G. A. Cohen’s Egalitarianism, ed. Alexander Kaufman, 50–78. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
CBO - Congressional Budget Office. 2013. The Distribution of Household Income and Federal Taxes, 2010. Report. Washington, DC: CBO - Congressional Budget Office.
CBO - Congressional Budget Office. 2015. Processes. https://www.cbo.gov/about/processes.
Charles, Kerwin Kofi, Erik Hurst, and Alexander Killewald. 2013. Marital Sorting and Parental Wealth. Demography 50 (1): 51–70.
Chetty, Raj, et al. 2014. Where Is the Land of Opportunity?: The Geography of Intergenerational Mobility in the United States. Quarterly Journal of Economics 129 (4): 1553–1623.
Christiano, Thomas. 2007. A Foundation for Egalitarianism. In Egalitarianism: New Essays on the Nature and Value of Equality, ed. Nils Holtug and Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen, 83–97. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Cohen, G. A. 1989. On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice. Ethics 99 (4): 906–944.
Cohen, G. A. 1993. Equality of What? On Welfare, Goods and Capabilities. In The Quality of Life, ed. Martha C. Nussbaum and Amartya Sen. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Cohen, G. A. 1995. Self-ownership, Freedom, and Equality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Cohen, G. A. 2011a. Expensive Taste Rides Again. In On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice, and Other Essays in Political Philosophy, ed. Michael Otsuka, 81–115. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Cohen, G. A. 2011b. Fairness and Legitimacy in Justice, and: Does Option Luck Ever Preserve Justice? In On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice, and Other Essays in Political Philosophy, ed. Michael Otsuka, 124–143. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Cohen, G. A. 2011c. How to Do Political Philosophy? In On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice, and Other Essays in Political Philosophy, ed. Michael Otsuka, 225–235. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Cohen, G. A. 2011d. On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice. In On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice, and Other Essays in Political Philosophy, ed. Michael Otsuka, 3–43. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Coronado, Julia Lynn, Don Fullerton, and Thomas Glass. 2000. The Progressivity of Social Security. Working Paper 7520. NBER - National Bureau of Economic Research.
Cupit, Geoffrey. 1996a. Desert and Responsibility. Canadian Journal of Philosophy 26 (1): 83–99.
Cupit, Geoffrey. 1996b. Justice as Fittingness. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Damico, Anthony Joseph. 2019. Lodown: Locally Download and Prepare Publicly-Available Microdata. R package version 0.1.0.
Daniels, Norman. 1996. Justice and Justification: Reflective Equilibrium in Theory and Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Danziger, Sheldon, Robert Haveman, and Eugene Smolensky. 1976. The Measurement and Trend of Inequality: A Basic Revision - Comment. Discussion Paper 335-76. University of Wisconsin - Madison: Institute for Research on Poverty.
Darrick Hamilton, and William Darity Jr. 2010. Can ‘Baby Bonds’ Eliminate the Racial Wealth Gap in Putative Post-Racial America? Review of Black Political Economy 37: 207–216.
Davis, Alyssa, and Lawrence Mishel. 2014. CEO Pay Continues to Rise as Typical Workers Are Paid Less. Issue Brief 380. EPI - Economic Policy Institute.
Delignette-Muller, Marie-Laure, Christophe Dutang, and Aurelie Siberchicot. 2018. fitdistrplus: Help to Fit of a Parametric Distribution to Non-censored or Censored Data. R package version 1.0-11.
Diamond, Peter A. 1982. Wage Determination and Efficiency in Search Equilibrium. The Review of Economic Studies 49 (2): 217–227.
Dick, James C. 1975. How to Justify a Distribution of Earnings. Philosophy & Public Affairs 4 (3): 248–272.
Dowle, Matt, and Arun Srinivasan. 2018. data.table: Extension of ‘data.frame’. R package version 1.11.8.
Duncan, Greg, et al. 2005. The Apple Does Not Fall Far from the Tree. In Unequal Chances: Family Background and Economic Success, ed. Samuel Bowles, Herbert Gintis, and Melissa Osborne Groves, 23–79. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Dworkin, Ronald. 1981a. What Is Equality? Part 1: Equality of Welfare. Philosophy & Public Affairs 10 (3): 185–246.
Dworkin, Ronald. 1981b. What Is Equality? Part 2: Equality of Resources. Philosophy & Public Affairs 10 (4): 283–345.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Dwyer, J.d.l.T. (2020). The Die Is Cast: Chance, Merit, and Inequality. In: Chance, Merit, and Economic Inequality. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21126-4_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21126-4_2
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-21125-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-21126-4
eBook Packages: Political Science and International StudiesPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)