Opportunity and preference learning: A reply to Christian Schubert

This paper replies to Christian Schubert’s critical review of my work on opportunity as a normative criterion. Schubert argues that the criterion I have proposed would not command general assent because it does not recognise the legitimacy of individuals’ preferences for achieving self-development by constraining their future opportunities. I argue that my account of the ‘responsible agent’ is compatible with self-development, and that preferences for self-constraint are less common than Schubert suggests. For the purposes of normative economics, my opportunity criterion is much more generally applicable than Schubert’s criterion of ‘opportunity to learn’.