"Moral Luck" is being well covered by David Friedman (Here, here, here, and here).
I have discussed the question at such length for two different reasons. The first is that I find moral luck to be an interesting puzzle and paradox, only parts of which I can adequately explain away. The second is that, while I doubt there are many people who would be willing to accept the full blown version of radical egalitarianism sketched out in my previous post, the basic argument is an important element in the widespread view that equality of outcome is on the whole a good thing.
It is also an important element in views of criminal punishment. If criminals are not morally responsible for being the sort of people who commit crimes, then, arguably, punishing them for those crimes is unjust. If you believe punishment is unjust, you are likely to persuade yourself that it is also unnecessary--that crime ought to be dealt with by educating or reeducating people, rather than by punishing them. Few would carry the argument all the way, but I think it has a significant influence on what many people want to believe.
Egalitarian outcomes are good, in theory, except for the nonminor quibble that incentives do indeed matter - people modify their behaviour based on rewards and costs. Whether or not Criminal A personally "deserves" to be punished is irrelevant. His behaviour is punished to deter Potential Criminals A, B, C, and D, and to deter his own future criminality. This leads to better outcomes for the rest of society, at the expense of Criminal A.
Likewise, we reward Hard Working Person A, not necessarily because he "deserves" to be rewarded, but because we want to encourage more hard work. More hard work leads to the creation of more things of value*, which leads to better outcomes for the rest of society, and even better outcomes for Hard Working Person A.
We can assume that all people are inherently equally worthy of deserts, and it matters not - we reward and punish behaviour, regardless or the worthiness of the person.
The assassin who missed might just be a bad shot--but he might also have lost his nerve at the last minute. The drunk driver who didn't quite run down a child might have been a little less drunk, or more careful, than the one who did. Seen from this standpoint, the legal distinction is a consequence of our imperfect knowledge. It is a special case of the general issue of whether we should punish acts by their consequences--ex post--or by what we know of their causes--ex ante.
We inflict the lesser punishment on the assassin who missed because he has inflicted less damage to society than the one who didn't, likewise the drunk driver who didn't quite run down a child. Incentives play little part in this. (If any. At the point that the deliberate behaviour occurred, we're past deterrence) I mention this passage mainly because I like the idea that from society's viewpoint we want incompetence in our assassins, but competence in our drunk drivers, though both murder and DWI are crimes. It probably says more about our drunk driving laws than anything else, but what that is, I don't know.
*It is the beauty of The Market that we reward Hard Working Person A based on the value that he creates for others by working hard, rather than how hard he works. Comparing this with our very imperfect method of deciding punishment for criminals (see also: jail time for potheads) is left as an exercise for the reader...
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