What Do We Actually Owe the Future?
Long-termism has become a fashionable answer in policy circles. The older philosophical objections to it are worth revisiting.
It has become common, in certain policy circles, to justify present-day sacrifice by appeal to the vast number of people who might exist in the future. The math is seductive: if trillions of future lives are at stake, almost any present cost looks small by comparison.
The case for the future
The argument has real force. A being's moral worth does not obviously depend on when it happens to be born, and a civilization that discounts the future to zero has historically made some of its worst mistakes — from depleted fisheries to unfunded pensions.
The case for caution
But the same reasoning, taken too far, can justify almost anything in the name of a future that is, definitionally, unknowable. Every generation that has claimed special insight into humanity's long-run trajectory has also been a product of its own narrow moment.
A narrower obligation
A more modest formulation may serve better: we owe the future not a calculated maximization of its population, but the preservation of its options — a world with clean water, functioning institutions, and enough uncommitted resources that future people can decide their own priorities rather than inheriting ours by default.
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