Socially caused inequalities, i.e., those attributable to differences in wealth inheritance, upbringing, and various other fortuitous social circumstances, are arbitrary from a moral point of view. We cannot, morally speaking, claim any credit for benefiting from circumstances which we had not caused, nor even affected, through our conscious, deliberate action. That much is widely accepted as a moral truth so obvious as not requiring any further belabouring. But then, "natural" inequalities, that is, those attributed solely to our inborn superior natural abilities, skills and talents, are morally arbitrary, too. Their beneficial effect on our social opportunities is as equally "undeserved" as that of social circumstances. What implications has this analogy of social and natural inequalities for a theory ofjustice?
There are, roughly, three possible responses to the above observation. The first one is to admit the equal moral arbitrariness of natural and social inequalities but to deny the validity of any redistributive conclusions stemming from them. This is a classical conservative position: "undeserved" deprivations are just bad luck, regardless of whether they can be attributed to social arrangements or to natural differences. It is not a proper purpose for a legal system to counter the adverse effects of luck in general: this argument in a recent article by Richard Epstein captures well a widespread conservative conventional wisdom) "Life is not fair", proclaims Milton Friedman 2 and a legion of free-market conservatives with him. Significantly, Friedman actually uses the analogy of natural and social inequalities in order to assert the inevitability of the latter on the basis of their equal moral status with the former. "The inheritance of property can be interfered with more