The basic idea might be stated in the language of personal responsibility. If some are worse off than others, under what conditions are those who are worse off appropriately held responsible for their unequal condition in the sense that no one has any moral obligation (or responsibility) to make good their shortfall? The luck egalitarian answer is that if your coming to be in a bad state compared to others lay within your power to control, you bear responsibility for your being in that state. The condition you are in is properly attributable to you. We then need an account of what renders individuals responsible in these ways. If hard determinism is true, no one is ever responsible in the requisite way, and the luck egalitarian equality of opportunity conception of distributive justice dictates equality of condition across persons. On other conceptions, people can be responsible for their varying fortunes, when the right background is in place, and when this is so, equal opportunity can coexist with inequality of outcome.  