The argument appears to be that we should compensate people for bad luck, whether that's living on a flood plain, or suffering from poor health. But why stop t

The argument appears to be that we should compensate people for bad luck, whether that's living on a flood plain, or suffering from poor health. But why stop there? Why not compensate people for their less-than-optimal genes? It's well established that people of below-average heights earn less over a lifetime than tall people, and one can hardly tell them to just knuckle down and grow a bit taller. They're entirely innocent victims of forces beyond their control. I think it's possible to divide people into three groups: people who accept my above statement and think that we should compensate the unfortunate, people who also accept that above statement and think that we should not, and therefore (perhaps) should not compensate the flooded or the ill, and people who simply don't accept the statement. Right-wing libertarians are pretty much in category two. Socialists (real, actual socialists) are probably in category one. The group that interests me is category three, which seems to consist of most people, and which doesn't seem to have a coherent view on this. Why should we help flood victims or cancer sufferers and not the vertically-challenged? For my part, I'm ethically in category one, but I don't really know if it's possible to compensate people for their misfortune without having to make a vast range of impossible judgements about what constitutes 'misfortune'.