 It is interesting to note that under most welfare-based principles, it is also the case that people’s level of economic benefits depends on factors beyond their control. But welfarists view this as a virtue of their theory, since they think the only morally relevant characteristic of any distribution is the welfare resulting from it. Whether the distribution ties economic benefits to matters beyond our control is morally irrelevant from the welfarist point of view. (As it happens, welfarists often hold the empirical claim that people have little control over their contributions to society anyway.) However, for people’s benefits to depend on factors beyond their control is a more awkward result for desert theorists who, with luck egalitarians, emphasize the responsibility of people in choosing to engage in more or less productive activities.