Setting to the side the details of Dworkin's construction, we can ask about the prospects of the general project he pursues. The starting point, which some had considered prior to Dworkin's contribution, is to consider what we should count as an equal distribution when people have different goods and they have different preferences over these goods. The basic idea is to treat as an equal distribution of resources one which no one prefers to alter—no one prefers any other person's pile of resourc