  In reply: the advocate of equality (or priority) might stiff-arm the idea that people should get what they deserve. Maybe in a diverse modern society any standard of virtue will be contestable, and so not a good building block for constructing fundamental moral principles. Maybe we are all determined by prior conditions and causes to behave just as we do, and this fact properly understood should lead us to hold either that the idea of being deserving lacks clear sense or that everyone's deservingness score is the same. On either view, rewarding the deserving is not a moral imperative. At most doing this will be a means to other goals, not desirable for its own sake.