I would actually say that 12(2,0)+12(0,2) being equivalent to (2,0) and (0,2) is in contradiction with equality of opportunity. In the first case, both individuals have an equal chance of being well-off (getting 2), but in the second and third, only one has any chance of being well-off, so the opportunities to be well-off are only equal in the first case (essentially the same objection to essentially the same case is made in “Cardinal Welfare, Individualistic Ethics, and Interpersonal Comparison of Utility: Comment”, in which Peter Diamond writes “it seems reasonable for the individual to be concerned solely with final states while society is also interested in the process of choice”). This is what ex ante prioritarianism/egalitarianism is for, but it can lead to counterintuitive results. See the comments on that post, and “Decide As You Would With Full Information! An Argument Against Ex Ante Pareto” by Marc Fleurbaey & Alex Voorhoeve.
For literature on equality of outcomes and uncertainty, the terms to look for are “ex post egalitarianism” and “ex post prioritarianism” (or with the hyphen as “ex-post”, but I think Google isn’t sensitive to this).
Yeah, my point was that ex-ante utility was valued equally, but I think that was confusing. I’m just going to remove that section. Thanks!
I would actually say that 12(2,0)+12(0,2) being equivalent to (2,0) and (0,2) is in contradiction with equality of opportunity. In the first case, both individuals have an equal chance of being well-off (getting 2), but in the second and third, only one has any chance of being well-off, so the opportunities to be well-off are only equal in the first case (essentially the same objection to essentially the same case is made in “Cardinal Welfare, Individualistic Ethics, and Interpersonal Comparison of Utility: Comment”, in which Peter Diamond writes “it seems reasonable for the individual to be concerned solely with final states while society is also interested in the process of choice”). This is what ex ante prioritarianism/egalitarianism is for, but it can lead to counterintuitive results. See the comments on that post, and “Decide As You Would With Full Information! An Argument Against Ex Ante Pareto” by Marc Fleurbaey & Alex Voorhoeve.
For literature on equality of outcomes and uncertainty, the terms to look for are “ex post egalitarianism” and “ex post prioritarianism” (or with the hyphen as “ex-post”, but I think Google isn’t sensitive to this).
Yeah, my point was that ex-ante utility was valued equally, but I think that was confusing. I’m just going to remove that section. Thanks!