Equal Chances versus Equal Outcomes: When Are Lotteries Fair and Justified?

Abstract

According to one potent challenge to the value and fairness of distribution by lot, the lottery chance of receiving a good is lacking in value or otherwise insignificant or irrelevant in comparison with actually receiving the good. To meet this challenge, I show in Section I that the far greater significance of receiving all of an undivided good needn’t undermine the case for equal lottery chances of the whole good, as compared with an outcome involving equally divided portions of this good. I argue in Section II that it mislocates the value of lottery chances to assume that they must contribute, in themselves, to a person’s well-being. Rather their significance primarily resides in their expected instrumental value in delivering goods of independent value. In Section III, I provide an account of when distribution by lot is perfectly fair in spite of the inevitability of an unequal outcome among equal claimants.