Caring about the distant future: why it matters and what it means
University of Chicago law review, vol. 74, no. 1, 2007, pp. 5–40
Abstract
This article puts forward a principle called Deep Concern for the Distant Future, which postulates that both near and distant future interests matter greatly, and inframarginal considerations have at least equal weight to marginal factors. The article then goes on to examine how this principle relates to economic approaches to discounting, showcasing both its advantages and its limitations. Additionally, the article argues that economic growth should be prioritized by policy makers, with the ultimate goal of maximizing sustainable growth while upholding common sense moral standards. The article concludes by stating that this approach to policy making is compatible with the tenets of common sense morality. – AI-generated abstract.
Quotes from this work
Einstein’s theory of relativity suggests that there is no fact of the matter as to when “now” is. Any measurement of time is relative to the perspective of an observer. In other words, if you are traveling very fast, the clocks of others are speeding up from your point of view. You will spend a few years in a spaceship but when you return to earth thousands or millions of years will have passed. Yet it seems odd, to say the least, to discount the well-being of people as their velocity increases. Should we pay less attention to the safety of our spacecraft, and thus the welfare of our astronauts, the faster those vehicles go? If, for instance, we sent off a spacecraft at near the velocity of light, the astronauts would return to earth, hardly aged, millions of years hence. Should we—because of positive discounting—not give them enough fuel to make a safe landing? And if you decline to condemn them to death, how are they different from other “residents” in the distant future?
If the time horizon is extremely short, the benefits of continued higher growth will be choked off and will tend to be small in nature. Even if we hold a deep concern for the distant future, perhaps there is no distant future to care about. To present this point in its starkest form, imagine that the world were set to end tomorrow. There would be little point in maximizing the growth rate, and arguably we should just throw a party and consume what we can. Even if we could boost growth in the interim hours, the payoff would be small and not very durable. The case for growth maximization therefore is stronger the longer the time horizon we consider.