equal opportunity

equal opportunity, in political theory, the idea that people ought to be able to compete on equal terms, or on a “level playing field,” for advantaged offices and positions. Proponents of equal opportunity believe that the principle is compatible with, and indeed may justify, inequalities of outcome of some sort, but there is considerable disagreement over precisely to what degree and what kind of inequalities it justifies and how it does so. See also egalitarianism.

Fairness and equality

Many believe that equal opportunity requires that advantaged positions be subject to open competition. (This view is sometimes captured by the slogan, “Careers open to talents.”) The idea there is that jobs and limited educational places should be open to all and that the selection procedures for them should be designed to identify the best-qualified candidates. In practice, that appears to be an efficient way of allocating jobs so as to maximize productivity and of distributing prized educational places to those who are likely to gain the most from them. But, even if it is a necessary condition of equal opportunity, it cannot be a sufficient condition. If it were, equal opportunity would permit differences in people’s social circumstances—such as the economic class, family, or culture into which they were born—to have too deep an impact on their prospects. The ideal would be compatible with, for example, a society in which those born into a lower economic class have radically different prospects from those born into a higher economic class as a result of the way that the different resources at their disposal influence their access to the qualifications required for success. The solution, it might be thought, is to suppose that equal opportunity requires not only open competition for advantaged positions but also fair access to qualifications. The resulting position is often called fair, or substantive, equal opportunity, in contrast to the formal equal opportunity provided by open competition on its own.

The American political philosopher John Rawls defended a version of fair equal opportunity. He argued that advantaged positions should be open to all, not only formally but also in such a way that each person has a fair chance of attaining them. He treated that idea as equivalent to the claim that those with the same level of talent and ability, and the same willingness to use them, should have the same prospects of success, regardless of factors such as class, race, and sex. Implementing fair equal opportunity would require counteracting the effects of differences in class, race, sex, and the like, and it would have substantial implications for the design of a system of public education, including the tax regime required to fund it. Some have worried that even the provision of high-quality public education would be insufficient to guarantee fair equal opportunity, on the grounds that differences between families, such as the different values they attach to education and the different resources they have available to them, could continue to prevent those with the same level of talent and ability, and the same willingness to use them, from having the same prospects of success. Some went so far as to argue that implementing fair equal opportunity in an uncompromising way and without regard to other values would require abolishing the traditional family.

Luck egalitarianism

The ideal of equal opportunity does not necessarily lead to equality of outcome, since its aim is consistent with allowing people’s life prospects to be influenced by their values and choices. From that standpoint, the underlying motivation of the ideal of equal opportunity, properly understood, is to counteract the effects of people’s different natural and social circumstances while permitting inequalities of condition that emerge as a result of their choices. On that basis, some scholars have argued that inequalities arising from differences in choice are not only just but necessary, to give personal responsibility its due. That view is sometimes described as luck egalitarianism.

Luck egalitarianism maintains that, while inequalities are unjust if they derive from differences in people’s circumstances—because circumstances are a matter of brute luck—they are just if they are the product of people’s voluntary choices. Luck egalitarianism is thus a combination of two different claims: first, that justice requires the neutralization of the effects of differences in people’s circumstances, and, second, that it is just to require people to bear the costs, or allow them to enjoy the benefits, of their voluntary choices. In making those claims, luck egalitarianism invokes a distinction between choice and circumstance, or between brute luck and “option luck.”

Luck egalitarianism has its critics, however. Given the social forces to which each person is subject, the distinction between choice and circumstance, or between brute luck and option luck, is not always easy to draw in a plausible way. But even if a satisfactory way of drawing those distinctions could be found, there is still the worry that luck egalitarianism is too harsh in the way that it holds people responsible for their foolish or reckless behaviour. It seems to imply that those who end up needy as a result of their own imprudence can justly be forced to bear the costs of their choices. So people who choose to smoke in full knowledge of the risks involved and develop lung cancer may have no entitlement to the health care that they need but cannot afford. Uncompromising luck egalitarians may insist that they have no objection to voluntary schemes to help those with self-inflicted needs but that they regard the forcible extraction of taxes to help those who are responsible for their plight as sanctioning the exploitation of the prudent. Others, however, may concede that luck egalitarianism should be supplemented with a further principle of justice, such as, for example, a principle holding that the needy—that is, those whose condition falls below some threshold—are entitled to support regardless of how their needs arose.

Critics of equal opportunity

Although there is widespread agreement that equal opportunity is a requirement of justice, there are also critics of the principle. Dissenters on the left argue that equal opportunity is simply a way to legitimate inequalities of wealth and income that are inherently unjust. Another challenge comes from libertarians, who argue that employers are entitled to fill vacant positions within their workforce with whomever they want, for whatever reason they want. According to that view, the entitlement of employers to decide who should work for them on whatever basis they choose is grounded in their property rights.