17-Sustainability & Intergenerational Cooperation

8/16/2019 17-Sustainability & Intergenerational Cooperation

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SustainabilitSustainabilit

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Context• Anthropogenic ecological destruction

• Shouldn’t we talk about intergenerational justice?

• What do we owe to future generations?

• How much sacrifices we should be willing to make for

safeguarding the quality of life of the future

generations?

3FS/IITJ/KJG/2016‐16


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Two prominent views

•

– Overly demanding

– Total number of ossible future enerations outnumber the

number of the present generation

• Contractualism

–

We owe nothing – Cannot have contractual relationship with parties who do not

– Non-reciprocity problem: benefits can flow only forward in time

– If there is no possibility of intergenerational cooperation, thenthere is no place for social contract to determine how benefits

and burdens of cooperation are to be assigned

–

justice4FS/IITJ/KJG/2016‐16


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Answer to the contractualist objection

• Nonreciprocity problem stems from an overly narrow,

direct, conception of reciprocity• Still indirect reciprocity is possible

• Not necessary that a person to whom one gives a benefit

be the same person from whom one takes a benefit• The concept of just savings (no immediate gains, but…)

• The nature and function of investment goods

•

In savings (socio-techno-cultural) one has to forgoconsumpt on, contrary to one s nterest



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“Cooperation,” as implied here, is a technical term used todescribe situations in which a group of individuals, by

exercising restraint in their pursuit of individual self-interest, is



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Example 1.

The Prisoner’s dilemma



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Example 2:

The Farmer’s Dilemma (David Hume)



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•

existing in human societies is the above dispositione. . share market education taxation insurance intra/international a reements

• Even restricting greenhouse gas emission is not just

fairness in following the terms of contracts



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position to assert that there exists a contract among the past-

present-future generations

• Circumstances of justice do not exist intergenerationally

• The living cannot cooperate with the dead; nor with the ones yet to live

au er s pro em (people living at the upper side of river)

Parafit’s auditorium problem (visibility)



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Problems with the overly narrow view of contractualist view:

• We can and we do cooperate with the not-yet-born

• As participants in the holistic system of reciprocity• Direct reciprocity is not essential

• Time arrow or absence of mutuality between generations need not

• Intergenerational overlap

• People undergo a lengthy period of dependency both at the

beginning and at the end of their lives

• We find altruism justifiable and beneficial



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Rower, later traveler!



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• Cooperation now induces cooperation later

• Defection brings immediate halt of any game

• People refrain from defecting, considering subsequent roundsof the game

• Though x may not get returns from y whom he helped, x

expects that some z will be able to return• Old generation is unable to give or harm the young

• A time bomb thought will invite universal defection


17-Sustainability & Intergenerational Cooperation

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