Why Boomers suck, or, commodify your self-loathing

[Ian Murray]

> =========
> I got my number from Congressional testimony.
>
> Well didn't social security get started partly because too many
older
> workers were staying in the labor force for 'too' long, and coupled
> with lack of job growth, severely crimping opportunities for new
> workers? And what about all those seniority perks at work, who's
idea
> was that? Isn't it funny we hear of the boomer's complaining about
> young whippersnappers comin' in and taking their job a fraction of
the
> salary? And isn't there just a little bit of an age bias in the
power
> structure of capital, gerontocracy/oligarchy jokes and all that? I'm
> not advocating generational warfare by any means, but there does
seem
> to be something to conflicting time preferences that don't
necessarily
> map well onto class interests. How would we overcome this? More life
> cycle research?
>
> Ian
==============
Considering any post-capitalist society will still have to come to
terms with time, chance/uncertainty, ethics, preferences, production
etc.

Ian

Why Posterity Matters: Environmental Policies and Future Generations,
Avner de-Shalit, (London: Routledge, 1995) 155pp.

ABSTRACT:
Why Posterity Matters: Environmental Policies and Future Generations
is a philosophical examination of how future generations must be
considered in the formulation of contemporary environmental policy.
de-Shalit offers one approach for structuring an obligation to future
generations.

This work is of interest to those who are concerned with the effect of
contemporary environmental policy on future generations. de-Shalit
begins his book with an explanation of a "trans- generational
community" and an examination of the possibility of this
re-conceptualization of community supporting obligations to future
generations. Thus, de-Shalit hopes that a communitarian theory
writ-large will support both positive and negative obligations to even
remote generations. The author asserts that lack of temporal
continuity between remote generations is not problematic because they
have; cultural interaction and moral similarity.

Chapter two focuses upon applications of the theory of
trans-generational communities. Chapter three examines Utilitarian
theory and the not-yet-born. de-Shalit addresses Utilitarian theory
and population policy and questions of trans-generational
distribution. In support of his views that Utilitarianism is more
trans-generational friendly than other moral theories, and that it
would disallow discounting, the author quotes Sidgwick: "... the time
at which a man exists cannot affect the value of his happiness from a
universal point of view."

Contractarian theories, specifically that of John Rawls, are examined
in chapter four. Theories of mutual advantage and the
multi-generational context, and theories of justice as impartiality
and inter-generational justice are examined. In the next chapter, the
controversial question of the rights of future people are addressed.
Specifically, the author examines: human rights and welfare rights.
de-Shalit concludes with a chapter which succinctly presents the
advantages to his communitarian theory of inter- generational justice.
The most promising of these advantages is that de-Shalit's theory
releases the present generation from: dependence upon impossible
information about future generations, the ontological issue of
potential versus actual persons and: the theory is non-atomistic and
assists the present generation in identifying the content of our
obligations to future generations.