There’s quite a bit of internal discussion on this at CEA.
There are several reasons for discounting. Some of them are quite correctly applied in social policy contexts, whereas some are not applicable (as the case you highlight, which is often called ‘pure rate of time preference’). They are also sometimes misapplied.
I do think that helping to make sure that discounting is done correctly according to context is an important goal, and this is something that the Global Priorities Project may push for. But trying to remove discounting altogether in analysis may harm future people rather than help them.
This paper by Dasgupta has some good discussion of the different purposes of discounting (but I wouldn’t take too much from its discussion of eta).
There’s quite a bit of internal discussion on this at CEA.
There are several reasons for discounting. Some of them are quite correctly applied in social policy contexts, whereas some are not applicable (as the case you highlight, which is often called ‘pure rate of time preference’). They are also sometimes misapplied.
I do think that helping to make sure that discounting is done correctly according to context is an important goal, and this is something that the Global Priorities Project may push for. But trying to remove discounting altogether in analysis may harm future people rather than help them.
This paper by Dasgupta has some good discussion of the different purposes of discounting (but I wouldn’t take too much from its discussion of eta).
In addition to upvoting, I want to mention that strikes me as something very worthwhile for the Global Priorities Project to try.