  In response to this important point, it might be argued that when luck-egalitarians write about “neutralizing luck”, this is really short-hand for something like “eliminating the differential effects on people’s interests of factors which from their perspective are a matter of luck.” This is no different from saying that affirmative action in favor of women is a way of neutralizing the effects of sexist discrimination. In saying this, we do not imagine that affirmative action removes sexist discrimination and all its effects; we mean merely that the affirmative action program eliminates the differential effects on men and women of sexist discrimination (e.g., in university admissions). On this reading, considerations about luck serve, not to justify equality, but to select the appropriate egalitarian view from among the large family of views that ascribe intrinsic significance to equality. As Arneson puts it: “The argument for equal opportunity rather than straight equality is simply that it is morally fitting to hold individuals responsible for the foreseeable consequences of their voluntary choices” (Arneson 1989, 88). Equality is the default position, morally speaking.  It is not justified by appeal to luck. Such an appeal, however, explains why some deviations from this default position need not be bad from an egalitarian point of view, for in the relevant deviations it is not a matter of luck that some people are worse off than others. In response to Hurley’s point, Cohen offers a related reply: “That it extinguishes the influence of luck is no more of an argument for egalitarianism than that it promotes utility is an argument for utilitarianism and in each case for the same reason, to wit, that the cited feature is too definitive of the position in question to justify the position in question” (Cohen 2006, 441–442; see also Vallentyne 2006, 434; Hurley 2006, 459–465). In fact, he goes on to offer something which is more radical than the short-hand description of the luck-egalitarian aim offered in the opening sentence of this paragraph. Since luck-egalitarians are opposed to luck “in the name of fairness” (compare Temkin 2003(a), 767) and since, no less than inequality, equality is unfair when “in disaccord with choice”, equality might unjust for exactly the same reason as inequality might (Cohen 2006, 444; cf. Segall 2012). Pragmatic, not principled, reasons explain why unjust equalities tend to not to be mentioned by luck-egalitarians.