How to Consider Future People’s Preferences: Generations vs. Transgenerational Communities as Proxies for Preference Aggregation

Abstract How should the preferences of future people be considered in today’s decision making? Two challenges arise. First, there is uncertainty regarding the content of future preferences: the epistemic challenge lies in eliciting these preferences correctly. Second, present people must be motivated to respect these preferences: the psychological challenge is to induce incorporation of future people into present-day decisions. I compare two methods of intergenerational procedural justice. The first takes a generation-first approach: it considers future individuals primarily as members of their respective generations and seeks to represent their interests through generational ombudspersons. The second focuses on the social group to which a future person belongs. This community-first approach makes room for an individual’s preferences by giving a voice to present members of her transgenerational community. Existing theories of intergenerational justice by and large implicitly follow the generation-first method. However, the community-first approach better addresses both the epistemic and the psychological challenge.