Lotteries have their place, and they need not be unjust. Acceptable lotteries are used to allocate “goods,” like courses in some universities, or “bads,” like the draft in the military. They serve a purpose. But the judgment lotteries we talk about allocate nothing. They just produce uncertainty. Imagine an insurance company whose underwriters are noiseless and set the optimal premium, but a chance device then intervenes to modify the quote that the client actually sees. Evidently, there would be no justification for such a lottery. Neither is there any justification for a system in which the
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