Discounting Across Generations: Necessary, not Suspect
Discounting Across Generations: Necessary, not Suspect
复制标题
跨代折扣：必要而非可疑
DOI：
10.1111/0272-4332.206072
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发表时间：
2000
期刊：
影响因子：
3.8
通讯作者：
R. Belzer
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
R. Belzer
人们会定期对对未来影响进行贴现的做法提出道德上的反对意见。由于担心长期核废料处置和全球气候变化对子孙后代的潜在影响，导致这些道德反对意见一再出现。本文从实践、伦理和分析的角度反驳了对未来折扣的各种伦理反对意见。对未来影响进行贴现是一种普遍存在的做法，实际上无法避免。如果公共政策禁止未来公共决策打折扣，那么这种限制永远不可能成功地施加于市场。即使政府禁止个人这样做，市场价值也将始终反映未来影响的完整、贴现流。从道德上讲，没有任何基础可以选择上限时间范围，超过该时间范围就应拒绝贴现。任何提出的视野都是任意的，没有明显的基础。所有决策从根本上来说都是不可逆转的，因此未来贴现的反对者也必须定义一定程度的不可逆转性，超出该程度的正常贴现不应适用，并以道德为基础捍卫这种划分的基础。这项任务变得更加复杂，因为选择很少（如果有的话）像反对者所说的那样不可逆转。为了证明未来贴现是不恰当的，给出的典型例子夸大了实际存在的不可逆转性程度，并低估了随后的修改机会。最后，以负担转移给子孙后代为由反对遥远未来贴现的人必须面对这样一个事实，即这种转移是目前广泛实行并得到公众大力支持的代际转移的特征。
Periodically, ethical objections are raised against the practice of discounting for future effects. Concerns about the potential effects on future generations from long‐term nuclear waste disposal and global climate change have caused these ethical objections to recur. This article rebuts the various ethical objections to future discounting on practical, ethical, and analytic grounds. Discounting for future effects is a ubiquitous practice that cannot be practically prevented. In the event that public policy would dictate against future discounting in public decisions, such a constraint could never be successfully imposed on markets. Market values will always reflect the full, discounted streams of future effects even if governments prohibited the practice among individuals. Ethically, there is no basis for choosing an upper‐bound time horizon beyond which discounting should be rejected. Any proposed horizon is arbitrary and has no obvious foundation. All decisions are fundamentally irreversible, so opponents of future discounting also must define a degree of irreversibility beyond which normal discounting should not apply, and defend on ethical grounds the basis for this demarcation. This task is further complicated by the likelihood that choices are rarely, if ever, as irreversible as opponents suggest. Typical examples given to prove future discounting is inappropriate overstate the degree of irreversibility actually present and understate subsequent opportunities for modifications. Finally, opposition to distant‐future discounting on the ground that burdens are shifted to future generations must face the fact that such shifts are characteristic of intergenerational transfers now practiced widely and with great public support.