As regular readers know, I tend to think of liberalism as an ameliorative art of government or reform program committed to creating the conditions for individuals to make their own meaningful choices securely alongside a commitment to moral egalitarianism, legal equality, and property rights. Conceived thus, it’s not an especially novel project (tracing it back to Adam Smith as I do), although I suspect people continue to underestimate how much more needs to be done to trust people to control their own individual and collaborative destinies even in places that pride themselves on being a ‘democracy.’ Currently, I am writing a kind of ‘manifesto’ to articulate this perspective pitched at the level, I hope, of my more thoughtful students and people interested in public affairs.
An argument I've made about climate and "future generations" can be turned around here, I think. A lot of utilitarians think it's OK to discount the welfare of future generations (as distinct from giving their marginal consumption less weight because we expect them to be richer). But, future generations are already here - all going well, my grandchildren will be around to enjoy a stabilised climate in 2100. Discounting the future requires discounting the welfare of later born people who are currently alive. (This doesn't get you to the crazy version of longtermism because of uncertainty, and because it pushes against counting hypothetical people who might not be born).
Now turn this around. If liberalism involves compensating people for breaches of their rights in the present (more precisely the immediate past), and claims of this kind can legitimately be made by their children who suffer as result of their parents' deprivation, then there is no point at which the claims are extinguished, except when the harm ceases to be relevant to peoples lives.
An argument I've made about climate and "future generations" can be turned around here, I think. A lot of utilitarians think it's OK to discount the welfare of future generations (as distinct from giving their marginal consumption less weight because we expect them to be richer). But, future generations are already here - all going well, my grandchildren will be around to enjoy a stabilised climate in 2100. Discounting the future requires discounting the welfare of later born people who are currently alive. (This doesn't get you to the crazy version of longtermism because of uncertainty, and because it pushes against counting hypothetical people who might not be born).
Now turn this around. If liberalism involves compensating people for breaches of their rights in the present (more precisely the immediate past), and claims of this kind can legitimately be made by their children who suffer as result of their parents' deprivation, then there is no point at which the claims are extinguished, except when the harm ceases to be relevant to peoples lives.