Diacritica 25-2_Filosofia.indb - cehum - Universidade do Minho

TIME PREFERENCE AND INTERGENERATIONAL JUSTICE
bers of future generations. Individuals would have the duty to sacrifi ce their
own consumption in the present to transmit their income and resources
to the next generation, in the hypothesis that well-being is synonymous of
accumulation of capital (wealth, but also natural resources, cultural patrimony,
etc.).
More fundamentally, a positive social discount rate is denounced by
Liberal egalitarians because of its incompatibility with the principle of equal
liberty for all, especially for future generations. According to the Maximin
principle, it could be legitimate to accord a social priority to current generations
because future one will be richer. But it appears unjust to accord a
social priority to individuals only because of their position in time:
In the case of society, pure time preference is unjust: it means (in the more
common distance when the future is discounted) that the living take advantage
of their position in time to favour their own interests. “(...) [W]e are not
allowed to treat generations diff erently solely on the grounds that they are earlier
or later in time” (Rawls, 1999: 260).
Liberal-egalitarian philosophers focused on Intergenerational justice
claim for temporal neutrality or impartiality to underline our duty to take
equally into account all individuals, whatever their position in time. And
as economists, such a moral claim results from a specifi c perception of
individual behaviour in time. But according to them, individuals do not
develop subjective time preference. In Th eory of Justice, Rawls assumed that
principles of justice are determined by individual participants in a pure
procedure, named original contract. [6] Th ese participants are under a veil of
ignorance: they do not know their social situation, their standard of living
or their own conception of good life. Th ey are then supposed to defi ne principles
of justice not on the ground of their particular position, but on general
considerations (Idem, 118-123). Principles of justice are then justifi ed
by the choices of participants under a veil of ignorance. And his intuitions
about Intergenerational justice are also justifi ed on the ground of refl ections
about individual behaviour in time under a veil of ignorance.
As economists, he observes that individuals in general could give their
preference to a present satisfaction and could develop a time preference.
But such a preference can be explained only by objective factors. He considers
then that individuals do not develop pure or subjective time prefer-
6 Two principles of justice have been emphasized. Th e fi rst principle is equal liberty for all. Th e
second principle is about social and economic inequalities: they are fair only whether they
result from equal opportunity for all and they maximise the situation of the least advantaged
(Rawls, 1999).
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