It’s not clear to me why I should be building for the people of tomorrow when the people of today go to war and die, literally, instead of building for themselves. I try to direct my spare and almost-spare money to causes I consider valuable; that some of them might be shown to have been harmful, hopeless or unnecessary, is a price of making any commitment at all. You can’t have moral actions without commitment.
That I miss some new important things, that’s a price of not following fashion. These two prices are in an equilibrium.
As to considering people good or bad, why are we doing this again?
It’s not clear to me why I should be building for the people of tomorrow when the people of today go to war and die, literally, instead of building for themselves.
The standard reasons given include that the people of tomorrow are more numerous, so count for more in most aggregation mechanisms. The standard reason NOT usually made explicit is that the people of tomorrow are more innocent and “deserve” it more—they haven’t sinned (yet) because they don’t exist.
As to considering people good or bad, why are we doing this again?
I wish I could agree, but… what counts more than what?
If intergenerational responsibility costs a lot, you should trade it against other expenses just as milk or space rockets. And the worst thing is that it almost never costs “you” anything separately from everybody else, and when people take that responsibility… it tends not to be universally viewed later as an example of moral action.
I have always wondered at how revolutions are justified afterwards on the grounds of economics but not on the grounds of shared responsibility. (Apologies if this offends anyone, I was looking for something sufficiently big. I don’t mean that justifying revolutions this way works, just that people try to do it.) Makes one wonder if that people of tomorrow thing is ever taken consistently...
It’s not clear to me why I should be building for the people of tomorrow when the people of today go to war and die, literally, instead of building for themselves. I try to direct my spare and almost-spare money to causes I consider valuable; that some of them might be shown to have been harmful, hopeless or unnecessary, is a price of making any commitment at all. You can’t have moral actions without commitment.
That I miss some new important things, that’s a price of not following fashion. These two prices are in an equilibrium.
As to considering people good or bad, why are we doing this again?
The standard reasons given include that the people of tomorrow are more numerous, so count for more in most aggregation mechanisms. The standard reason NOT usually made explicit is that the people of tomorrow are more innocent and “deserve” it more—they haven’t sinned (yet) because they don’t exist.
+1
I wish I could agree, but… what counts more than what?
If intergenerational responsibility costs a lot, you should trade it against other expenses just as milk or space rockets. And the worst thing is that it almost never costs “you” anything separately from everybody else, and when people take that responsibility… it tends not to be universally viewed later as an example of moral action.
I have always wondered at how revolutions are justified afterwards on the grounds of economics but not on the grounds of shared responsibility. (Apologies if this offends anyone, I was looking for something sufficiently big. I don’t mean that justifying revolutions this way works, just that people try to do it.) Makes one wonder if that people of tomorrow thing is ever taken consistently...