I - The Problem of "Pure Time
Preference"
A six year old girl wanders from the campsite, while her parents
set up camp and prepare dinner. About a hundred meters from the site,
she falls through some underbrush into an abandoned mineshaft, and is
killed instantly. The fact that the mine owner is criminally
responsible for failing to cover the mine, is no comfort to the
grief-stricken parents.
A dreadful tragedy! But I neglected to identify the date of this
accident. Does it matter? Is it any less a tragedy if it happened
last week? Or if it is to take place in ten years? Or one-hundred or
a thousand years?
Insurance companies and tort law are required to measure the value
of a human life in monetary terms. Thus, since the value of money is
necessarily discounted through time, it follows that according to
insurance and tort law, not to mention the presuppositions of
economics-based policy analysis, at a discount rate of 5%, one
child's life today is worth two in fourteen years, one hundred and
thirty-one in one hundred years, and more than a thousand in
two-hundred years.
Laws aside, if a mine owner could be absolutely certain that his
unattended shaft would cause no injury in two-hundred years, then
even a modest cost of sealing the shaft would be far greater than any
imaginable discounted damage costs that might result from an
open shaft after two-hundred years. After that, the "disvalue" of a
child's accidental death would count, from the perspective of time
present, less than a thousandth of the disvalue of that death next
week.
This scenario of safe-now and hazardous in the future is
more than a fanciful thought-experiment. It describes the actual
conditions with ozone depletion, the greenhouse effect, and the
"storage" of radioactive waste. In each of these cases, the misery
and loss of life more than two-hundred years in the future "matters"
less, by three orders of magnitude, than the lives and utilities of
our contemporaries.
Surely there is something wrong with this moral arithmetic. And
yet, once we put a cash-value on human life, or any other value for
that matter, and if we accept the universal economic premise that
monetary value depreciates through time, then these conclusions are
inescapable.
And yet, a failure to discount the future also appears to lead to
absurd conclusions. For if we must share equally all non-renewable
resources with all future persons, then we will each be personally
entitled to less than a cup of petroleum and a lump of coal. Neither
our resources nor our moral attention can or should be equally
divided amongst all future persons and all future time.
Is time-discounting an unquestioned premise in economics? I once
posed this question at a seminar at the University of California,
Santa Barbara. A prominent environmental economist at the table
replied, "of course it is, and this is simple common sense. After
all," he continued, "would you rather die in twenty days or in twenty
years?" I replied, "you mean, with all other things equal?"
Of course, "all other things" are not "equal" in this
case. My economist colleague was not describing, as his example
(i.e., "my death"), an analytically detachable event like a
toothache, assignable without further entailment at two separate
points along the time continuum. "My death," now or later, bears
entailments - namely, twenty years of my life.
In fact, under close examination, it appears that it is not the
passage of "pure time" itself that inclines us to discount the
future; rather it is a number of contingencies that attend the
passage of time that leads to the devaluation of the future. So
argues Derek Parfit, and I find his case persuasive.
Parfit presents and then refutes six arguments commonly proposed
in defense of discounting. They are arguments from democracy,
probability, opportunity costs, "better-off" successors, excessive
sacrifice, and special relations (e.g., with friends
and family). To these I would add two: Psychological
discounting (implicit in "the argument from democracy") and
epistemic discounting (due to declining knowledge, through
time, of the future).
"Psychological discounting" refers to the commonplace fact that
people generally prefer earlier gratifications to later, and later
pains to earlier - "all else equal." But this is a condition of human
psychology, not of "pure time" itself. Moreover, far from a universal
trait, exceptions to this rule are commonplace. For example,
love and parental duty will dictate that a child's
future education counts more than an indulgence today - quite apart
from any inducements of "return on investment." And both the
probability and our knowledge of future consequences can, in some
noteworthy cases, be greater in the remote future than in the near
future - thus reversing the usual decline of both probability and
knowledge through time. Ozone depletion, global warming and the
release of radwaste, noted above, are cases-in-point.
In similar manner, Parfit "disconnects" the six proposed
"arguments" for discounting from pure time simpliciter. He
concludes that none of these arguments succeeds:
The most that they could justify is the use of such a
[discount] rate as a crude rule of thumb. But this rule
would often go astray. It may often be morally permissible to be
less concerned about the more remote effects of our social
policies. But this would never be because these effects
are more remote. . . . All these [six] different reasons
need to be stated and judged separately, on their merits. If we
bundle them together in a Social Discount Rate, we make ourselves
morally blind.(2)
And yet, it is an indisputable fact that money depreciates through
time. Thus cash-in-hand can only be saved or invested through a
promise and expectation of "return on investment" or "interest
income" in the future sufficient to offset the "discounted" future
value of the present cash. And yet, if future values and disvalues
are discounted at normal rates of cash-depreciation, it is clear that
the value of the natural environment and of human life just
two-hundred years hence - approximately the current span of United
States history - will be insignificant from the perspective of
time-present. And there is scarcely any imaginable amount of human
suffering or planetary devastation a thousand years hence that can
not, at normal discount rates, be justified as an acceptable cost of
trivial advantages to the present generation.
If such indifference to the remote future is be avoided, then
clearly our policies must be based upon values that do not share the
properties of money. We must, in short, detach values from
prices. This will be the primary task of the remainder of
this paper.
II -- Monetized Values as a
Foundation of Public Policy
Any attempt to detach values from prices will face resistance from
a highly influential school of economists and from defenders of a
deeply entrenched approach to policy analysis -- "cost benefit
analysis.". In the United States, both have the attention and many of
the votes of national and state legislators.
Consider, for example, the following suggestions that public
environmental policy issues are most appropriately regarded as
economic issues - i.e., that values are best
regarded in terms of prices.
First, William Baxter:
All our environmental problems are, in essence, specific
instances of a problem of great familiarity: how can we arrange
our society so as to make the most effective use of our
resources... To assert that there is ... an environmental problem
is to assert, at least implicitly, that one or more resources is
not being used so as to maximize human satisfactions....
Environmental problems are economic problems, and better insight
can be gained by economic analysis.(3)
A. Myrick Freeman agrees:
To the economist, the environment is a scarce resource
which contributes to human welfare. The economic problem of the
environment is a small part of the overall economic problem: how
to manage our activities so as to meet our material needs and
wants in the face of scarcity... All goods that matter to
individuals ... must be capable of being bought and sold in
markets.(4)
Consider also the following from standard texts and respected
publications in environmental economics: "the benefit of any good or
service is simply its value to a consumer;"(5)
"in principle, the ultimate measure of environmental quality is the
value people place on these services ... or their willingness to
pay;"(6) and finally, "anything that
is valued instrumentally ... can in principle be handled by
economics, be it acts of friendship or love."(7)
Consistent with such sentiments,
President Ronald Reagan, immediately upon assuming office in 1981,
issued an Executive Order requiring all federal administrative
agencies and departments to justify proposed regulations with a
cost-benefit analysis. Similarly, several "regulatory reform acts,"
also requiring federal agencies to submit to cost-benefit analyses,
have recently been proposed by the U. S. Congress, only to be
defeated by narrow margins.(8)
It bears repeating that as long as
criteria such as these are to the foundation of public policy
evaluations, the values thus monetized will be discounted through
time and thus the conditions of life of remotely future persons will
count for virtually nothing.
Why then is "the economic
approach" to public policy (i.e., cost-benefit analysis and the
monetization of values) so attractive to legislators and policy
makers? There are several reasons:
- It appears to be sensitive to
particular and discriminable facts - namely consumer choices,
market prices, etc.
- It employs precise, formal
modes of quantification and calculation that are public and
replicable, and thus appears to be "scientific."
- It claims "value
neutrality" (as "a positive science") - thus, while it
reports "consumer preferences" it makes no moral judgments
regarding these preferences.(9)
- It is "democratic,"
reflecting the actual (rather than the "desirable")
values of the public.
- It is tolerant, assuming
that "each individual is the best judge of his own welfare"
(Baxter).
- It commensurates values
in terms of a common and quantifiable denominator: cash.
(Thus enabling the aforementioned advantages of quantification and
formalization).
- It is determinate: it
arrives at unequivocal conclusions - the so-called "bottom
line."
That final advantage ("the bottom
line") may suggest why, at congressional hearings, economists are
many and philosophers are few. The former are willing to supply
answers, while the latter are disposed to raise further
questions.(10)
With advantages such as these,
why not base policy on economic values? As many critics have
pointed out (among them such economists as Kenneth Arrow, Kenneth
Boulding, Herman Daly and Amartya Sen), many of the values most
cherished by cultivated human beings are either independent of, or
even inversely related to, economic values. Four such categories of
values immediately come to mind: those of the scholar,
the citizen, the moral philosopher, and the
lover.
(a) The primary value of the scholar,
of course, is truth -- as supported by evidence and sound
argument. An authentic scholar will say, "show me your evidence, and
if it is well-founded and your argument is sound, then you will
convince me." Never will he, qua scholar, say, "how much are
you willing to pay to have me believe you?" Similarly, judges and
juries ideally decide their verdicts on the weight of evidence. A
purchased verdict is not only invalid; it is quite properly regarded
as a crime. And even classical economists, when they publish their
theories, offer arguments, not bids.
(b) What an individual values (as a
citizen) for his community may be quite contrary to what he might
value for himself as a consumer. Mark Sagoff vividly illustrates this
contrast:
Last year I bribed a judge
to fix a couple of traffic tickets, and was glad to do so because
I saved my license. Yet, at election time, I helped to vote the
corrupt judge out of office. I speed on the highway, yet I want
the police to enforce laws against speeding. I used to buy mixers
in returnable bottles -- but who can bother to return them? I buy
only disposables now, but to soothe my conscience, I urge my state
senator to outlaw one-way containers. ... I send my dues to the
Sierra Club to protect areas in Alaska I shall never visit... And
of course, I applaud the endangered Species Act, although I have
no earthly use for the Colorado Squawfish or the Indiana bat... I
have an 'ecology now' sticker on a car that drips oil everywhere
it's parked.(11)
In fact, as these examples point out,
a complete human being is both an individual with consumer
preferences, and a citizen with loyalties and
moral aspirations, which frequently over-ride the
self-serving, "utility maximizing" motives of homo
economicus.
(c) Distributive justice. As
economists and utilitarian philosophers have long acknowledged,
"economic efficiency" and "utility maximization" do not, by
themselves, touch upon the essential moral issue of justice.
Economic theory is silent on the question of whether the wealth of
the cooperative enterprise which is society, goes to those who most
deserve it. "Just desert" is a moral, not an economic,
concept. Pareto optimality is the economist's term for that
condition in society of "perfect efficiency" whereby there are no
further transactions that can benefit anyone without making another
individual worse off. It is noteworthy that "Pareto optimality" can
describe a slave economy. For while justice demands the emancipation
of the slaves, this can not be accomplished without making the slave
owners "worse off."
(d) Love, friendship and loyalty that
is bought is less valuable than that which is given freely. Once
again, Mark Sagoff makes the point with characteristic wit and
eloquence: "A civilized person might climb the highest mountain, swim
the deepest river, or cross the hottest desert for love, sweet love.
He might do anything, indeed, except be willing to pay for
it."(12)
Finally, the market place can obscure
Adam Smith's essential distinction between "values in use" and
"values in exchange." "The things that have the greatest value in
use," he writes, "have frequently little or no value in exchange; and
on the contrary, those which have the greatest value in exchange have
frequently little or no value is use."(13)
As examples, Smith cites diamonds, which have little value in use but
great value in exchange, and water which has effectively infinite
value in use (we can not survive without it), but very little cost
(exchange value). Significantly, "environmental values" tend to be
"values in use," and thus greatly undervalued in markets.
Classical economists are quite
correct when they state that theirs is a "positive discipline" that
attempts to report values, rather than prescribe
values - and only a limited realm of values at that. For while they
might tell us what is valued by an amalgamated "consuming
public," they can not tell us what is valuable. But the
latter question, "what is valuable," is of most basic and urgent
concern to the policy-maker, the legislator and the citizen. Ask an
uncritical economist, "what is the value of X?" and he will likely
ask in reply, "what are you (or "the market") willing to pay for X?"
The astute citizen, asked such a question, will reply: "What am I willing to pay? Before I can answer that, I must first assess the
value of X?" And that "value" will, of necessity, be normative, not
economic. And if this value is environmental - for example, the value
of clean air, access to wilderness, biodiversity, and the
availability of these amenities into the remote future - then the
most appropriate means of assessing that value just might be, not an
assessment of the marginal price in a "free market" to
self-interested, utility-maximizing individuals, but rather a
consensus through evaluation in a forum of informed and deliberating
citizens or their elected representatives.
III -
Prices and Values - Analysis and
Contrast
The foregoing has suggested that
economic values do not fully account for all values, or even
those values must cherished by cultivated human beings. But while we
may have indicated that (economic) prices are
distinct from (moral) values, we have yet to offer an
account as to why and how they are distinct. That
will be the task of this section. If successful, we may be able to
identify "sustainable values" - values sufficiently detached from
"time-binding" monetization to escape discounting and thus to apply
to all future generations.
I have identified twelve paired
contrasts between prices and values, some of which
we have already encountered. Space constraints allow only a brief
account of six of these. However the remaining six are of sufficient
importance to require a more circumspect analysis.
Here, all at once, is the list of
contrasts:
PRICES
VALUES
Descriptive
Monetary
Commensurable (Cardinal Ordering)
Reductive, Aggregative
Relativistic, Conservative
Utilitarian (implicitly)
"Economic man"
Society as a ("Perfect") Marketplace
Agent Point of View
First-Order Motivation
Non-Moral
Discounted
|
Normative
Non-Monetary
Non-Commensurable (Ordinal)
Organic, Holistic, Contextual
Objective, Reformative
Deontological (possibly).
"Persons" (moral agents)
Society as a Community
Spectator (Moral) Point of View
Second Order Evaluation
(Some) Moral
Time Neutral
|
Descriptive/Normative: Here
we concede what the economist proclaims: his discipline is
rigorously descriptive. He passes no moral judgment on what the
individual consumer (or the collective market) values - as determined
by "willingness to pay," and as reflected in prices. (However, as we
shall see, the neo-classical economist presupposes a heavy burden of
highly controversial "metaethical" theory -- most notably, that of
"preference utilitarianism"). But a rigorously descriptive approach
to values does not, because it can not, banish normative concerns
from policy decisions. Policy-making, as an informed and
forced choice among alternative futures which will variously affect
the welfare and rights of morally considerable individuals, is
necessarily a morally significant enterprise. Recall our contrast
between the economist and the citizen: ask the former, "what is the
value of X?" and he will likely ask in reply, "what are you (or "the
market") willing to pay for X?" To this, the astute citizen will
reply: "What am I willing to pay? Before I can answer that, I must
first assess the value of X?" As the ever-astute Amartya Sen puts it,
"desiring is at best a consequence of valuation.."(14)
Monetary/Non-Monetary. As
noted above, the fundamental human values of truth, justice
and love are not "captured" by economic analysis. These are
unquestionably "non-monetary values."
Commensurable/Non-Commensurable.
The myriad indexes (e.g., Gross Domestic Product, Cost of Living,
etc.), formal concepts (e.g., indifference curves, marginal values),
and the virtuoso mathematical skills of the economists are all made
possible by their quantification of economic data, and their
commensuration of this data ("prices") in terms of the
single metric of cash-value. Given the assumption that "all
goods that matter to individuals (that is, all goods over which
individuals have preference orderings) must be capable of being
bought and sold in markets,"(15)
cash then becomes the "common coin," the
cardinal measure, through which economic values are rendered
fungible, transitive and determinate. In
contrast, for non-economic normative values, there is no comparable
metric. This does not mean, of course, that it is impossible to make
choices among competing normative values. In fact, such choices are
both unavoidable and even commonplace in practical life and public
policy, and the problem of prioritizing competing values is one of
the most troublesome issues of applied ethics. In such cases,
however, competing values are ranked ordinally and moral
decisions made in context. Lacking a "bottom line" of
prices, one is left with moral deliberation and "the moral
sense."
Reductive-Aggregative/Organic-Holistic-Contextual.
In microeconomic analysis, the focus of attention is upon the
preference-map of the individual - upon his degree of willingness to
buy or sell, thus maximizing his self-interested "utility." Society -
or better, "the economy" - is thus regarded as an aggregate of
individual preferences by these "utility maximizers."(16)
The "best result" for all is a summation of the best result
for each, aiming toward "Pareto optimaliity," wherein no
further exchange is possible without making someone "worse off"
(according to one's personal assessment of his preferences). In
contrast, the normative approach recognizes human communities as
organic wholes, with "emergent properties" that are more than the sum
of the utility exchanges of the component individual. The normative
perspective takes more seriously such game-theoretical paradoxes as
the Prisoner's Dilemma and the Tragedy of the Commons, whereby the
self-interested pursuit of maximum utility by each agent
proves to be self-defeating. Non-economic value perspectives are more
sensitive to "the moral paradox:" an appreciation that the most
effective means to maximize one's satisfactions in life is not to
seek to maximize one's satisfactions. (More about this
below).
Relativistic-Conservative/Objective-Reformative.
Economic analysis describes values as they are -
i.e., as reflected in the "willingness to pay" of consumers, as
reflected in market prices. Implicit in this analysis is that the
consumer "is the best judge of his own welfare" (Baxter). Thus there
is no criterion of value outside the individual (relativism), and
furthermore no advocacy from this point of view for an alternative
set of values (conservatism). "The desirable is that which is
desired." In contrast, the normative approach is usually equipped
with reasons and arguments in support of its claims
(objective), and insists that the values it defends are not
fully realized in personal lives or in social conditions as we find
them. It makes perfect sense, from the normative perspective, to
argue that consumer desires are not desirable, or that
preferences are not "really" preferable, and he is prepared
to present a reasoned argument in defense of his moral
claims.
Teleological
(Utilitarian)/Possibly Deontological. The classical economic
approach to values is thoroughly teleological, embracing
(usually uncritically) the ethical theory of preference
utilitarianism.(17)
This is a "consequentialist" theory, which holds that the value
of an act or policy is to be determined by the results thereof, and
that the "right" course of action is that which maximizes "the good"
(in this case, aggregated human want-satisfaction). In contrast,
normative values may be defended by "deontological" theories, which
hold that a course of action which maximizes the good might,
nevertheless not be the morally "right" thing to do.(18)
Thus, for example, John Rawls, in his deontological Theory of
Justice, contends that "each person possesses an inviolability
founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot
override. For this reason justice denies that the loss of freedom for
some is made right by a greater good shared by
others."(19)
With its thoroughgoing teleological
approach, mainstream economics is notoriously silent on the issue of
distributive justice - on the question, for example, of which of the
innumerable "Pareto optimal" distributions of wealth are more or less
"just." And as Sen observes, the concept of "rights" is very
problematic for traditional economists. In fact, he writes, "it is
fair to say that the view that rights cannot be intrinsically
important is fairly ingrained in the economic tradition now
established."(20)
Still worse, "the moral acceptance of rights ... may call for
systematic departures from self-interested behavior. Even a partial
and limited move in that direction in actual conduct can shake the
behavioral foundations of standard economic theory."(21)
The normative view departs most
radically from the economic in its analysis of human motivation, and
of the methodology and perspective of human evaluation. The
difference is no less than the absence in the economic view, and the
centrality in the normative view, of moral agency. The
difference between "economic man" on the one hand, and "the moral
agent" on the other hand, is so fundamental that an understanding of
the distinction between "prices" and "values" is impossible without
an account of just what it is that make most human beings morally
accountable for their value choices, both as individuals and as
citizens. Five of the remaining six contrasting pairs will deal with
moral agency. The final pair will summarize our
argument.
"Economic Man"/The Moral
Agent. "Economic man" is, to borrow Herbert Marcuse's term,
"one-dimensional." As noted above, he is a self-interested utility
maximizer - with "utility" defined (variously) as "want-" or
"preference-satisfaction," manifested as willingness to pay in a free
market. In established economic discourse, this behavior is described
as "rational."(22)
This is, as Sen observes, an account of human motivation that is
"pure, simple and hard-headed, and not messed up with such things as
goodwill or moral sentiments."(23)
It is only fair to note that Sen is among the economists who reject
this account of human nature.
The object is to understand, explain
and predict human behaviour in a way such that economic relationships
can be fruitfully studied and used for description, prognosis and
policy. The jettisoning of all motivations and valuations other than
the extremely narrow one of self-interest is hard to justify on
grounds of predictive usefulness, and it also seems to have rather
dubious empirical support. To stick to that narrow path does not seem
a very good way of going about our business.(24)
Fortunately for the rest of us who
live in human communities, "economic man" does not exist. We should
not want him as a neighbor.
In contrast, "the moral agent" - that
individual whom we can properly praise or blame morally for his or
her conduct - is multidimensional. While
the list of criteria that identify moral agency is in some dispute,
most moral philosophers would include most, it not all, of the
following characteristics in that list.(25)
The first five, which apply also to "economic man," are necessary
though not sufficient for moral agency:
- sentience, or the ability to feel pain
(also applies to "moral patients" as noted below).
- consciousness of external objects and
events.
- reasoning, the ability to solve
problems.
- self-motivated activity.
- the capacity to communicate through the use
of a complete, syntactic system of significant symbols (i.e., a
language).
In addition, the following capacities (each
grounded in the use of articulate language) are essential to the
acquisition of moral agency:
- a concept of oneself as a being continuing
through time.
- a capacity to conceptualize and choose
among alternative futures.
- a capacity to act on principle -- to
deliberately govern one's behavior according to rules.
- recognition of the personhood of other
persons.
This final capacity, the recognition of the
personhood of others, is the source of "the moral sentiments" of
benevolence and sympathy -- the foundation of
morality, according to David Hume and (as many economists neglect to
notice) his friend, Adam Smith.
The reason that this definition is crucial to
moral philosophy is that only such a being as that described above
can be said to be "morally responsible" or "duty-bound" (as, for
example, infants and animals are not).(26)
But while only such "moral agents" can meaningfully be said to be
"duty-bound," a larger set of individuals such as animals and very
young humans may be said to have rights (so-called "moral
patients").
Essential to moral agency are the
capacities to be both hypothetical spectators of oneself among others
("the moral point of view") and to be a critic and judge of one's own
desires. We will have much more to say about each of these capacities
below.
Society as a Market Place /
Society as a Community. Strictly speaking, the "marketplace"
need have no "place" at all. Though traditionally "placed" at a
specific location (e.g., at an Arabic souk or on Wall Street), now,
thanks to electronic communication, a market need not be placed
anywhere in particular (e.g., the NASDAQ "market"). All that is
required is some means by which buyers can communicate with sellers
and agree to transactions. It is the conditions of that
exchange that defines the "perfect markets" of formal economic
theory. These conditions require that the participants be completely
informed and numerous (virtually infinite), and that the transactions
be voluntary, mutually beneficial ("Pareto improvements"), open and
independent (without collusion), and finally that these exchanges
involve no transaction costs or externalities. Strangely, the same
economic theories that eschew moral value judgments, require, in their
"perfect markets," that the participants be both trusting and
trustworthy. It is immediately obvious that there is no such thing as
a "perfect market" in "the real world."
To call such aggregate transactions
of self-serving utility-maximizing individuals a "society" may in
fact be a misnomer. Some political leaders distrustful of "big
government" and enamored of "the wisdom of the free market" seem to
agree. Consider, for example, Margaret Thatcher's observation that
strictly speaking "there is no such thing as society, there are
individual men and women and there are families."(27)
But if, as this former Prime Minister proclaims, "there is no such
thing as society," one wonders what Lord Nelson was talking about
when he said to the fleet before the Battle of Trafalgar,
"England expects each man to do his duty?" And for what did
the "few" airmen in the Battle of Britain, for whom so many owed so
much, fight and die? Surely not for a marketplace!
The moral agent has a ready answer to
these questions: these warriors, along with saints and heroes
throughout history, sacrificed their lives for their
communities. Successful "communities," unlike markets, are
what John Rawls calls "well-ordered societies," where individuals are
joined in "civic friendship" by tacit mutual agreements to respect
the rights and integrity of each other. Communities are typically
bound by shared religious or moral beliefs, and by political compacts
(such as the United States Constitution) which embody common values
and objectives. Life in flourishing communities nurtures such civic
sentiments as pride, loyalty, compassion, and allegiance -
"other-directed" sentiments that stand in stark contrast to the
"self-interested" motivations of the economic agent.
Egocentric Point of View /
Spectator (Moral) Point of View. "Economic man" sees the world
through "the mind's I." He perceives himself as surrounded by
opportunities to exchange goods, services and cash, all to be
utilized toward end of satisfying his needs and maximizing his
utility. The interests of "others" is of no concern for, it is
assumed, they will be "taken care of" through the benevolence of the
"invisible hand" of the free market. Just as the conscious center of
"economic man's" universe is ego, the central time-locus
thereof is now. From this perspective, the value of all
future events and interests degrade with time; i.e, the future is
"discounted."
The perspective of the moral agent is
fundamentally different. Born into the society of fellow humans, and
acquiring the use of language and abstract thought thereby,
socialized individuals achieve self-consciousness and thus learn both
to treat themselves as an objects of their own reflection and to
recognize in others the cares, aspirations and values that are
central to their own existence.(28)
Then, through the Humean "natural sentiments" of benevolence and
sympathy, the well-being of the others becomes a self-transcending
good-for-themselves, dissolving the ego-boundary of
self-interest.
By assuming the equal (Kant would say
the "infinite") value of all agents, the individual as moral agent is
forbidden to allow himself advantage in moral deliberation. By
regarding himself as equally (but no more) entitled to rights and
equally burdened by duties, the moral agent becomes a spectator of
himself among others as he plays his role upon the stage of interpersonal and
intertemporal interaction with other agents.
It is from the "the moral point of
view"(29)
that game-theoretical problems such as "the prisoner's dilemma" and
"the tragedy of the commons" find their solution, while the same
problems are completely intractable from the perspective of the
self-serving individual of classical economic theory. From this
common realization, achieved from millennia of historical experience,
has emerged communities and governments. This realization and
experience is reflected in the political philosophy that has
dominated Western thought from the time of Aristotle, through Hobbes,
Locke, Rousseau and Kant, to John Rawls, and which finds expression
in such documents as the Magna Carta, The Declaration of
Independence, and The Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
It is thus quite remarkable that the rival "social atomism" of
classical economic theory has become the political ideology of the
"establishment" of our time.
First-Order Motivation / Second
Order Evaluation. Mainstream economists proudly proclaim that
their methodology is "value neutral." To "economic man," all desires
and preferences are created equal. The terrorist's purchase of a
thousand dollars of explosives and the humanitarian donation of a
thousand dollars for Kosovo relief, are counted equally in the
economic metric of cash. Neither is there a distinction to be found
in economic analysis between the addict's "consumer preference" for a
bag of heroin, or the reformed addict's "consumer preference" for
addiction therapy. There are no distinctions drawn between virtuous
and selfish motives. Desires are interpreted as "willingness to pay,"
which are all measured by the common denominator of cash.
In contrast, from the point of view
of the moral evaluator, there is a crucial ordering of one's desires.
As we all know, humans have a myriad of desires regarding food, sex,
prestige, power, and wealth. The comparative strength of these
desires can be measured by the agent's willingness to pay for their
satisfaction. However, one might also have desires regarding
desires - indeed one must have these if one is to have a
conscience. It is through the awareness and activity of these "second
order desires" that morality enters the stage of personal
and social human behavior.
In a significant and influential
paper, philosopher Harry Frankfort(30)
gives a vivid account of how the two orders of desire are both
distinct and conjoined. The basic concept is clear and accessible
even to a child: to take a familiar example, the reformed alcoholic
both "desires" a drink and "desires" to remain sober. The object of the latter desire
(for sobriety) is the former: his "desire" for sobriety is as
that his "desire" to have a drink be frustrated. In
ordinary language, this dissonance between second and first-order
desires is called "moral temptation." Frankfort uses the
term "wanton" to describe individuals who lack second order desires.
"Economic man" is a wanton.
In an refinement of Frankfort's moral
psychology, Gary Watson(31)
recognizes the "second order" as "the valuational system" which
passes judgment upon the "prudence" and "worthiness" of one's
primary desires. "The valuational system of an agent," writes Watson,
"is that set of considerations which, when combined with his factual
beliefs (and probability estimates) yields judgments of the form: 'the
thing for me to do in these circumstances, all things considered, is
a.'"(32)
As this analysis of moral psychology
clearly indicates, the capacity for moral judgment is founded upon
the use of syntactic language. From language, we learn to abstract
concepts and to combine them into rules. Language permits us to
"fund" knowledge from the past (both from our own lives, and from the
lives of all who have left us a written or oral record), and to
anticipate and hypothesize alternative futures before committing
ourselves to one or another of them. Furthermore, through language we
acquire the aforementioned capacities to conceive of ourselves as
beings continuing through time, in the company of similar beings
deserving respect and with rights-claims upon us. Finally, through
these concepts of oneself and other selves, we might, in our
contemplation, be "moral spectators" of ourselves in our interactions
with others. In short, language allows us to "step aside" from the
immediacy of events and desires, whereby we might, with cool
reflection, establish a "rational life plan" through an ordering of
our means with our ends, and by establishing rules of conduct toward
our fellow agents.
If we are successful in the
second-order evaluation and control of our first-order desires, we
will earn the moral satisfaction of self-respect, just as others
whose "valuational system" rules their "motivational system" deserve
our moral admiration.
Non-Moral Values / Moral
Values. Having identified the capacities of "moral agency" (or
"personhood"), we are prepared to define "moral value." These are
values that reflect the worth of persons. Moral "worthiness"
is manifested in the virtues, which include honesty,
fidelity, courage, compassion, temperance, etc. Moral "unworthiness"
is displayed in the vices which traditionally include pride,
gluttony, lust, avarice, sloth, etc.. It is noteworthy that the vices
generally betray a failure of "second-order" control over first-order
desires and impulses.
The term "non-moral value" applies to
anything else that might be "graded" (termed good or bad), including
beauty (of art objects or natural landscapes),
function (of machines), viability (of organisms), stability
(of societies or ecosystems), enjoyments (of experiences) - and
prices (of commodities and services). Thus, while we speak
of "good" automobiles, we never regard them as "virtuous." And while
locusts who devour our crops are (from our point of view) "bad," it
would be inappropriate to condemn them as "wicked," for they are not
moral agents.
Our response to moral agency, in
ourselves and others, gives rise to the moral sentiments.
Satisfaction with our own worth evokes the sentiment of
self-respect; lack of such satisfaction causes
guilt. Concern about other's opinions of our worth leads to
feelings of shame. Similarly, positive or negative
evaluations of the worth of other persons evokes sentiments,
respectively, of admiration or contempt.
Price, especially as it is
treated by economists, is a paradigmatically "non-moral value." The
personal "worth" of the buyers and sellers in the market are of no
concern to the economist. While the economist wishes to know what is
"desired," he does not ask whether that which is "desired" is, in
fact, desirable. Economic analysis, observes Mark Sagoff,
"treats people as of equal worth because it treats them as of no
worth, but only as places or channels at which willingness to pay is
found." (For an eloquent statement of the amorality of economic
"values" see the quotation from Robert F. Kennedy in the Appendix to
this paper).
On a planet teeming with life but
without moral agents, there may be non-moral goods and bads. But
there will be no right and wrong, no virtue or
vice, and no
justice or injustice. Neither will such moral values as virtue or
justice be found in a society of individuals whose motives are
confined to self-interested utility, with all values reduced to
market prices. Indeed, it is doubtful that such a "society," lacking
the adhesive of common loyalties, could exist at all.
Discounted Future / Time
Neutrality. If the foregoing analysis has been successful, we
have distinguished personal value ("virtue") and
social value ("justice"), from economic value or
"price." Furthermore, we have demonstrated that prices alone
are insufficient measures of the worth of persons and communities,
and thus of public policies regarding persons and communities. For
all the advantages of facility, objectivity, and clarity that are
obtained through economic analysis of social phenomena and public
policy, it is a serious error to believe that these advantages are
enough. To reduce human beings to self-interested utility-maximizers,
and their values to a "willingness to pay" is to engage in an
analytical amputation of all that makes us admirable - our
aspirations, our accomplishments, and our virtues. Unlike
prices, these values, apprehended from the timeless "moral
point of view," do not diminish through time.
Accordingly, the unfortunate girl in
our opening example was not a bundle of preferences, she was a
person. Because our perspective upon her hypothetical
misfortune is from "the moral point of view," it is timeless. If the
motive (and the law) to render the mineshaft safe is morally
defensible, it constitutes a second-order "trumping" of the mine
owner's economic motive to reduce operating expenses in order to
maximize profits. His moral obligation to render his property safe
for all future time prevails, regardless of how little that future
might "count" when discounted in terms of cash-values.
Fairness requires that we anticipate
a rebuttal by the economist: "We never meant to suggest," he might
reply, "that homo economicus describes all dimensions of
human existence, and thus we do not contend that prices are
the only values. While agreeing with all the distinctions
that you present above, we would only insist that economic
motives and values happen to be the subject-matter of our
discipline. In some conditions of ordinary life, and even of public
life, human beings, both individually and collectively, act upon
economic motives. When they do, the concepts and methods of economics
might prove to be illuminating."
Fair enough! We have little
quarrel with economists who thus qualify and confine the application
of their methodology and concepts. Unfortunately, such commendable
modesty is not universal. Moreover, these wise qualifications are
more likely to be found among scholars, especially as they write
papers for, and discuss public issues with, their colleagues. Our
quarrel is with policy-makers, popular writers, legislators, and
politicians, such as Lady Thatcher, who believe that "there is no
society" apart from individuals and families, and who trust the
mysterious and "invisible" hand of the free-market to provide the
best solutions to all social problems. Our quarrel extends to
scholars who, in their public pronouncements, choose to shed their
scholarly reserve as they proclaim that economic values are the only
values of relevant interest in state policy: individuals such as
Milton Friedman who asserts without qualification that "there is
nothing wrong with the United States that a dose of smaller
and less intrusive government would not cure."(33)
Finally, our criticism is directed at those who believe that
all provision for the remote future should be interpreted
through the lens of economic analysis -- meaning, of course, that the
future should be discounted. It has been almost twenty years since
Ronald Reagan, in his first inaugural address, proclaimed that
"government is not the solution, it is the problem." Even a
superficial survey of the public opinion and debate on public policy
will reveal that "the wisdom of the free market" and "the evils of
'big government,'" have generally moved out of arena of serious
dispute and into the background of unexamined
presupposition.
IV - Policy
Implications
With the contrasting analyses of
prices and values, and the resulting conclusion
that not all values (in particular moral values) should be
time-discounted, we have completed the essential task of this paper.
Even so, two challenges deserve response.
The first challenge appeared at the
opening of this paper: "If we must share equally all non-renewable
resources with all future persons, then we will each be personally
entitled to less than a cup of petroleum and a lump of coal. Neither
our resources nor our moral attention can or should be equally
divided amongst all future persons and all future time."
The reply is straightforward, if
somewhat paradoxical: An even sharing of resources and moral
attention with all future persons will not serve those future
persons, and of course will devastate the present generation.
Reducing the allotment of fossil fuels to the paradigmatic lump of
coal and cup of oil renders these resources useless to all.
Similarly, if we apportion a major share of our attention to the
remote future, our neglect of our own business will severely degrade
the value of our institutional legacy to the future. We owe it to the
future to maintain, and yes to enjoy, a thriving civilization in our
time so that we might pass on an enduring and valuable legacy to the
future. And as for exhaustible energy resources, we are entitled to
use them provided we treat them as "bridge resources" -
i.e., that we invest part of the advantage gained thereby to the task
of securing alternative energy sources when the earth's fossil fuel
account is finally depleted. Future generations are not necessarily
entitled to coal and oil, per se, but to what these fuels
provide, namely abundant energy.
The second challenge is posed by the
economists, Herman Leonard and Richard Zeckhauser:
We have defended
cost-benefit analysis as the most practical of ethically
defensible methods and the most ethical of practically usable
methods for conducting public decision-making. It cannot
substitute for - nor can it adequately encompass, analyze of
consider - the sensitive application of social values. Thus it
cannot be made the final arbiter of public decisions. But it does
add a useful structure to public debate, and it does enable us to
quantify some of the quantifiable aspects of public decisions. Our
defense parallels Winston Churchill's argument for democracy: it
is not perfect, but it is better than the
alternatives.(34)
With due appreciation for these
economists' acknowledgment of the limitations of cost-benefit
analysis (including, by implication, future discounting), we close
with a suggestion that there may be a "better alternative" method
than cost-benefit analysis for formulating public policy, and in
particular policy regarding remotely future generations.
As a summarizing theme for our
alternative policy guidelines, we propose a rule taught to all Boy
Scouts: "Leave the campsite as good or better than you found it."
Political philosophers and political economists will recognize this
rule as a homespun application of "the Lockean Proviso:" "Take what
you need from nature, and leave as much and as good for your
successors." We will return to this proviso shortly.(35)
In his monumental contribution to moral philosophy, A Theory
of Justice, John Rawls offers a helpful set of policy guidelines
to ensure "justice between generations." "Just savings," he writes,
entails that "each generation must . . . preserve the gains of
culture and civilization, . . . maintain intact those just
institutions that have been established . ..[and] put aside
in each period of time a suitable amount of real capital
accumulation."(36) By "capital,"
Rawls means "not only factories and machines, and so on, but also the
knowledge and culture, as well as the techniques and skills, that
make possible just institutions and the fair values of
liberty."(37) This is an important
qualification, since it indicates that our "savings" are not simply
of "consumables" which are forgone today to be "used" tomorrow. For
unlike depletable resources, the intellectual and cultural "capital"
to which Rawls refers become more valuable to the future, the more
they are used with advantage by the present generation.
This is a good beginning, but only that. In the first place, the
terms "savings" and "capital" suggest that the problem of justice
between generations is primarily, if not exclusively, an economic
issue. Secondly, our duties may be more of a negative kind
("forebearances") than positive (active commissions). Finally, Rawls
has little to say about our ecological responsibilities as stewards
of the planet and its life community. Let's examine some of these
additional dimensions of just provision for the future.(38)
(a) We should favor policies that mitigate evil over policies
that promote good. This precept, modeled after the so-called
"principle of negative utility," is supported by several common-sense
considerations. First of all, avoidable or treatable pain demands the
moral attention of everyone, while "the pursuit of happiness" is a
private matter. Moreover, it is much easier to identify and address
the causes of misery, than to promote the wellsprings of happiness.
This is especially so with regard to the future. Their pains and ours
can be traced to our common somatic needs and the status of the
planetary ecosystem which sustains us both. Their pleasures and
satisfactions will come from developments in culture, taste and
technology that we cannot even imagine.
(b) "Savings," "Capital" and the Critical Lockean
Proviso. Here we elaborate on an earlier suggestion. John Locke
stated that it was morally permissible to "take from nature," mix
one's labor with the taking, and claim the result as one's property,
so long as one leaves "as much and as good" for others. "(The Lockean
Proviso"). While this may have been true in a world of frontiers and
homesteads, it is no longer, strictly speaking, possible. Recall that
if we were to share equally our petroleum resources with all, far
into the future, we would be allocated a cupful each. So we must,
instead, adopt a "Critical Lockean Proviso," whereby we leave for the
future, not the very resource that we deplete, but the opportunity to
obtain whatever the resource is used for. Thus while future
generations may not need petroleum per se, they will need
what petroleum provides, namely energy. Our responsibility,
then, will be to find a replacement.
The proviso also entails that we utilize recycling
technologies and "interest-bearing" (i.e., renewable)
resources. And this, in turn, validates the need to preserve natural
ecosystems, which are more valuable to us and the future than we can
ever fully discover, or even imagine.
Most fundamentally, we must preserve the options! And
this means the institutions that find and develop the options:
scientific education and research. Of course, to return to an earlier
point, the support of scientific research and development benefits
our generation while it benefits the future.
(c) Just Anticipations. Our duties to the future must
include technological and environmental impact studies which seek to
assess the consequences of projects and policies several hundred
years into the future. To be sure, such studies exact costs, in
research and manpower, and in the delay and even the cancellation of
projects that are beneficial in the short term. The duty of just
anticipation, then, entails a responsibility to foresee, and to
expand the capacity to foresee, developing crises, and furthermore to
enact appropriate remedies for the sake of future persons while the
time is available to act effectively. Obvious examples of such a duty
would include studies of stratospheric ozone depletion, global
warming, and nuclear waste disposal.
(d) Just Forebearances. This dimension of the duty to
posterity clearly follows from the previous: for once we have
determined, through scientific research, how our actions might affect
the remote future, we may face a clear duty to forgo advantages now
for the sake of future generations. To cite our examples once again,
studies of atmospheric physics and chemistry may determine that we
face a choice between having our grandchildren protected from
ultra-violet radiation or having our generation enjoy the convenience
of aerosol sprays and supersonic aircraft. Similarly, due to the
so-called "greenhouse effect, our voracious appetite for fossil fuel
energy may be inconsistent with a tolerable climate for our
successors. Accordingly, decision to favor future generations would,
in these instances, require forbearances on the part of those now
living.
(f) Just Stewardship. Whatever else they may need in
terms of just institutions, knowledge, skills, resources and capital,
future generations will need air, water, food and a viable gene pool.
To have these essentials, they will need that which has capably,
reliably and continuously provided up to our present generation;
namely, a functioning ecosystem. For posterity to have it, this
ecosystem will have had to have been further preserved, maintained,
even cherished through the continuing observance, by intervening
generation, of just stewardship of the planetary life-support
system.
The economic approach to policy is
objective, quantifiable, formal and determinate, and thus very
attractive to policy-makers. But in the final analysis it is, by
itself, inadequate to the task of determining and carrying out our
moral responsibilities to the future. One of the primary proclaimed
"strengths" of the economic approach - "value neutrality" - turns out
to be its fatal flaw. "Public policy" is a deliberate attempt to make
an optimum choice among alternative futures, each of which will
variably affect the rights and welfare of future persons. As such,
policy-making is fundamentally a morally significant enterprise. Thus
any "value neutral method" such as economic analysis, however useful
as an ingredient to policy-analysis, must fail as a sufficient
determiner of public policy. To the policy-maker, the economist's
methodology of pricing and its entailed discounting of the
future, while an invaluable servant, can be a cruel
master.
Copyright 1999 by Ernest
Partridge
NOTES AND
REFERENCES
1. Amartya Sen, On Ethics and
Economics, Oxford: Blackwell, 1987, pp 1-2..
2. Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons,
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984, p. 486.
3. William Baxter, People or Penguins: The
Case for Optimal Pollution, New York: Columbia University Press,
1974, p. 15, 17.
4. A. Myrick Freeman, "The Ethical Basis of the
Economic View of the Environment," The Environmental Ethics and
Policy Book, Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1994. P. 307, 309.
5. Joseph Seneca and Michael Taussig,
Environmental Economics, 2nd ed., Englewood
Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1979. p. 6.
6. A. Myrick Freeman, Robert H. Haveman,
AllenV. Kneese, The Economics of Environmental Policy, New
York: Wiley, 1973. P. 23.
7. Steven Edwards, "In Defense of Environmental
Economics," Environmental Ethics, 9:1 (Spring, 1987), p.
79.
8. It was not always so. Early environmental
legislation often took no notice of economic factors. As Paul Portney
reports,
When the U.S. Congress
drafter the environmental legislation o the early 1970s,
[environmental] problems were thought to be so obvious and
so serious ... that members simply could not envision directing
EPA to address them only if it was affordable to do so. As a
consequence, most of the early laws effectively directed the
agency's administrator to disregard cost altogether in setting
ambient air quality standards and some water quality
standards...
Paul R. Portney, "Counting the Cost:
The Growing Role of Economics in Environmental Decision Making,"
Environment, 40:2 (March, 1998), p. 15.
9. "The approach
of the economist is amoral [that is] economists cannot say
what is 'just' or 'fair.' Richard B. McKenzie and Gordon tullock,
The New World of Economics, Homewood, IL: Richard D. Irwin,
1978, p.7.
"We do not have any [means]
of resolving ethical disagreements, they are ultimately judgments of
value ... and cannot finally be proved or disproved." Paul Heyne and
Thomas Johnson, Toward Economic Understanding, Chicago:
Science research Associates, 1976, p 767.
10. "'The
economic approach' is sensitive to particular facts, it is specific,
and it suggests a method for resolving questions of trade-offs
between competing and valued ends. [It] ... seems
'practical,' 'hardnosed,' and 'realistic,' and its use of precise,
formal modes of quantification and calculation is alluring." Donald
VanDeVeer and Christine Pierce, "Letting the Market Decide,"
Environmental Ethics and Policy Book, Belmont, CA:
Wadsworth, 1994, p. 296.
11. Mark Sagoff,
The Economy of the Earth, Cambridge, 1988, p. 52.
12.
Ibid., 69.
13. Adam Smith,
The Wealth of Nations, Book 1, Chapter 4.
14. Op. cit.,
p. 46.
15. Freeman,
op.cit., p. 309.
16. "The most
widely accepted [economic policy] criterion asks whether the
aggregate of the gains to those made better off measured in money
terms is greater than the money value of the losses of those made
worse off. If the gains exceed the losses, the policy is accepted by
this criterion. The gains and losses are to be measured in terms of
each individual's willingness to receive the gains or to prevent the
policy-imposed losses..." A. Myrick Freeman III, "The Ethical Basis
of the Economic View of the Environment," Center for the Study of
Values and Social Policy, University of Colorado at Boulder,
1983.
17. Unlike
classical utilitarians, most "mainstream economists" prefer not to
delve into the psychology and even less the morality of
"preferences." Instead, market "preferences" are simply defined
operationally: they are identified by the agents' acceptance or
rejection of exchange opportunities, as measured by prices. The
"tipping point" at which declining prices turn "no-sales" into a
"sales," plotted along variations in supply or demand, yields
so-called "indifference curves." Cf. Mark Sagoff, "Some Problems with
Environmental Economics," Environmental Ethics, 10 (Spring,
1988), p. 58.
18. There are, of
course, many perfectly respectable and well thought-out teleological
theories of normative ethics, which are nonetheless severely critical
of classical economic theory.
19. John Rawls,
A Theory of Justice, Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press,
1971, pp 1-2.
20. Op.
cit., p. 49.
21. Ibid., p.
57.
22. "We live in a
world of reasonably well-informed people acting intelligently in
pursuit of their self-interests." George Stigler, "Economics or
Ethics," in Sterling McMurrin (ed), The Tanner Lectures on Human
Values, v. II, 1981, p. 176.
23. Sen, loc.
cit., pp. 1-2, see opening quotation. If rationality is defined
as "self-interested utility maximization" then by implication, the
behavior of saints and heros such as Gandhi, King and Mandella is
"irrational." The reply is familiar: "But these individuals behaved
as they did because they chose to do so." Thus
"self-interested acts" are redefined to mean "voluntary acts," and
the apparent egoism of economic theory is reduced to a tautology. If,
in fact, the claim that "human beings are fundamentally motivated by
self-interest" is to be empirically meaningful, then it must also be
falsifiable - the defenders of this psychological egoism
must be prepared to describe what it would be like
(allegedly contrary to fact) to encounter voluntary acts that are not
self-interested. If the lives of Gandhi, King and Mandella are not
contrary evidence, then what would be?
24. Sen, op.
cit., p. 79.
25. The first
five criteria are adapted from Mary Anne Warren's paper, "On the
Moral and Legal Status of Abortion" (The Monist, 57:1, Jan.
1973, p. 55). The final four criteria are my additions to Warren's
list.
26. Because the
only "persons" we know of are human beings, there is a widespread
temptation to treat the terms "person" and "human being" as
synonymous. This careless equation of meaning leads to a great deal
of confusion and befuddlement in moral arguments, most notably
arguments over such issues as abortion, euthanasia, and environmental
ethics. The distinction between person (a moral concept) and human
being (a biological concept) can readily be grasped by citing
contrary cases. In the TV series, "Star Trek" the android, "Data,"
not to mention numerous "aliens" are depicted as non-human persons.
Dolphins may be persons, although we have not determined this to be
the case. On the other hand, a severely brain damaged or irreversibly
comatose human being is not a person.
27. When I first
heard this quotation, I didn't believe it. Then a British friend
tracked down the source for me. Margaret Thatcher, The Downing
Street Years, London: Harper-Collins, p. 626.
28. Here I am
incorporating ideas of the American Sociologist-Philosopher, George
Herbert Mead. (1863-1931).
29. "The moral
point of view" is a term adopted by numerous philosophers, most
notably Kurt Baier, the author of a book with that title. The concept
also appears in John Stuart Mill as "the ideal observer," in John
Rawls as "the original position," and Thomas Nagel as "the view from
nowhere."
30. Harry
Frankfort, "Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person,"
Journal of Philosophy, 68 (January, 1971), p-
5-20.
31. Gary Watson,
"Free Agency," Journal of Philosophy, 72 (April, 1975), pp.
205-220.
32.
Ibid., 91.
33. My emphasis.
Milton Friedman, October, 1983, quoted by Peter Brown in a "pre-text"
page of his book, Restoring the Public Trust, Boston: Beacon
Press, 1994. I am awaiting a reply from Prof. Brown to my request for
an exact citation of that quotation by Friedman.
34. Herman B.
Leonard and Richard J. Zeckhauser, "Cost-Benefit Analysis
Defended," QQ: Report from the Center for Philosophy and Public
Policy, University of Maryland, 3:3, p. 9
35. To this
point, this paper is original and prepared expressly for the Vilm
Conference (May, 1999). The remainder will draw heavily from a paper
prepared for a conference, in Kyoto, Japan, November 1994, and later
published as "Posterity and the "Strains of Commitment," Kim and
Dator, eds., Creating a New History for Future Generations
(also the name of the conference), Kyoto: Institute for the
Integrated Study of Future Generations, 1995.
36. John Rawls,
A Theory of Justice, (Harvard University Press, 1971), p.
285.
37.
Ibid. p. 288.
38. This critique
of Rawls's "Just Savings Principle," in particular the following
account of "just anticipations," "just forbearances," and "just
stewardship," is drawn from my unpublished paper, "Beyond Just
Savings." A briefer version of that paper, which has its origins in
my Doctoral Dissertation, "Rawls and the Duty to Posterity,"
(University of Utah, 1976), was presented at the Pacific Division
Meeting of the American Philosophical Association, March,
1978.
