Can Discounting Future Benefits and Costs be Just?
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.21814/eps.9.1.6504Keywords:
philosophy, intergenerational justice, Gosseries, discounting, future resourcesAbstract
Discussions of justice in intergenerational contexts often touch upon discounting future benefits and costs. This paper discusses how the discounting issue arises, summarizes four justifications of discounting presented by Axel Gosseries in his book What Is Intergenerational Justice (2023) and proposes a new justification for intergenerational discounting. This essay claims that discounting future benefits can be just because the value of resources saved for the future to people in the future is uncertain; what contemporary people think will be valuable for future generations may not be so in the future. As we do not know whether the future generation will value a given resource or not, we may discount benefits and costs for future generations.
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