Also, am I missing something, or would a zero discount rate make this analysis impossible?
I don’t think anyone is suggesting a zero discount rate? Worth noting though that that former paper I linked to discusses a generally accepted argument that the discount rate should fall over time to its lowest possible value (Weitzman’s argument).
Most discount rates are loaded on the growth adjustment (ng) and not the ethical discount rate (d) so I don’t think longtermism really bites against having a discount rate.
The growth adjustment term is only relevant if we’re talking about increasing the wealth of future people, not when we’re talking about saving them from extinction. To quote Toby Ord in the Precipice:
“The entire justification of the growth adjustment term term is to adjust for marginal benefits that are worth less to you when you are richer (such as money or things money can easily buy), but that is inapplicable here—if anything, the richer people might be, the more they would benefit from avoiding ruin or oblivion. Put another way, the ηg term is applicable only when discounting monetary benefits, but here we are considering discounting wellbeing (or utility) itself. So the ηg term should be treated as zero, leaving us with a social discount rate equal to δ.”
Yes, Ramsey discounting focuses on higher incomes of people in the future, which is the part I focused on. I probably shouldn’t have said “main”, but I meant that uncertainty over the future seems like the first order concern to me(and Ramsey ignores it).
Habryka’s comment:
applying even mild economic discount rates very quickly implies pursuing policies that act with extreme disregard for any future civilizations and future humans (and as such overdetermine the results of any analysis about the long-run future).
seems to be arguing for a zero discount rate.
Good point that growth-adjusted discounting doesn’t apply here, my main claim was incorrect.
I don’t think this is true if we’re talking about Ramsey discounting. Discounting for public policy: A survey and Ramsey and Intergenerational Welfare Economics don’t seem to indicate this.
I don’t think anyone is suggesting a zero discount rate? Worth noting though that that former paper I linked to discusses a generally accepted argument that the discount rate should fall over time to its lowest possible value (Weitzman’s argument).
The growth adjustment term is only relevant if we’re talking about increasing the wealth of future people, not when we’re talking about saving them from extinction. To quote Toby Ord in the Precipice:
“The entire justification of the growth adjustment term term is to adjust for marginal benefits that are worth less to you when you are richer (such as money or things money can easily buy), but that is inapplicable here—if anything, the richer people might be, the more they would benefit from avoiding ruin or oblivion. Put another way, the ηg term is applicable only when discounting monetary benefits, but here we are considering discounting wellbeing (or utility) itself. So the ηg term should be treated as zero, leaving us with a social discount rate equal to δ.”
Yes, Ramsey discounting focuses on higher incomes of people in the future, which is the part I focused on. I probably shouldn’t have said “main”, but I meant that uncertainty over the future seems like the first order concern to me(and Ramsey ignores it).
Habryka’s comment:
seems to be arguing for a zero discount rate.
Good point that growth-adjusted discounting doesn’t apply here, my main claim was incorrect.