Moral Luck Sucks

Every once in awhile, I fall into a deep, existential panic over the concept of moral luck.Moral luck, per the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "occurs when an agent can be correctly treated as an object of moral judgment despite the fact that a significant aspect of what she is assessed for depends on factors beyond her control." It presses against a very common intuition, which is that we should not be held accountable for things that we did not choose or which are out of our control (i.e., the products of "bad luck").For example, suppose two drivers each strike and kill a pedestrian. One did so after carelessly running a stop sign. The other was driving perfectly carefully, but a pedestrian happened to jump out on the street and was struck. The first driver we generally agree can be held liable, often even criminally liable; the second driver we do not, because the former made a bad choice (driving carelessly) while the latter did not.But here's the thing -- all of us, even…