On future generations, I favor thinking about possible institutional reforms which directly incentivize greater regard for future generations.
I’m curious why you say this given that you earlier noted the problem that a large part of the electorate “are in all likelihood systematically mistaken about the sort of policies that would advance their interests.” Making people give more regard to future generations seems to be of extremely unclear value if they are likely to be systematically mistaken about what would serve the interests of future generations. This seems like a consideration in favour of interventions which aim to improve the quality of decision-making (e.g. via deliberative democracy initiatives) vs those which try to directly make people’s decisions more about the far future (although of course, these needn’t be done in isolation). But perhaps I am simply misunderstanding what you mean by “directly incentivize greater regard for future generations”?
Thanks, David. I should have been clearer. I certainly don’t support interventions that incentivize greater regard for future generations without also attempting to improve the overall quality of decision-making.
In the article above, Aaron claims that a transition to approval voting would benefit future people. For reasons outlined above, I am skeptical of that claim. It is unclear whether greater responsiveness to the preferences of the electorate’s middle would bring about greater regard for future generations. Moreover, the evidence from public polling and political psychology suggests that even if the electorate’s middle had sufficiently high regard for future generations, they would have mistaken beliefs about what sorts of policies would benefit future generations. (Note: I don’t claim that political psychologists have gone out and investigated the degree to which regular voters possess knowledge of future-beneficial institutions and policies. Maybe they have, but I haven’t encountered such research myself. Instead, I claim that given the ignorance of the electorate with regard to even very basic politically relevant facts, we should expect them to be ignorant of future-beneficial institutions and policies.)
Now, we might try something like age-weighted voting. But this strikes me as an intervention that ignores the overall quality of decision-making. At best, it places comparatively more political power in the hands of people who might regard future generations more than their older counterparts. This is the sort of institutional reform that is in tension with my worries about the demand-side of politics.
I favor thinking about ways to both incentivize greater regard for future generations and improving the overall quality of decision-making. I have no settled opinions on what the eventual institutions would look like. Perhaps they would involve independent agencies acting in an advisory capacity, or perhaps they would involve novel governmental bodies tasked specifically with representing the interests of future generations, or perhaps something else entirely. Deliberative reform will probably play some role, but beyond that I don’t know. Institutional design is complicated business and we shouldn’t pretend we know in advance of serious empirical investigation what will work best. Still, I think we currently know enough to know that mere tweaks to the current voting system without improving the overall quality of decision-making will not be enough.
I’m curious why you say this given that you earlier noted the problem that a large part of the electorate “are in all likelihood systematically mistaken about the sort of policies that would advance their interests.” Making people give more regard to future generations seems to be of extremely unclear value if they are likely to be systematically mistaken about what would serve the interests of future generations. This seems like a consideration in favour of interventions which aim to improve the quality of decision-making (e.g. via deliberative democracy initiatives) vs those which try to directly make people’s decisions more about the far future (although of course, these needn’t be done in isolation). But perhaps I am simply misunderstanding what you mean by “directly incentivize greater regard for future generations”?
Thanks, David. I should have been clearer. I certainly don’t support interventions that incentivize greater regard for future generations without also attempting to improve the overall quality of decision-making.
In the article above, Aaron claims that a transition to approval voting would benefit future people. For reasons outlined above, I am skeptical of that claim. It is unclear whether greater responsiveness to the preferences of the electorate’s middle would bring about greater regard for future generations. Moreover, the evidence from public polling and political psychology suggests that even if the electorate’s middle had sufficiently high regard for future generations, they would have mistaken beliefs about what sorts of policies would benefit future generations. (Note: I don’t claim that political psychologists have gone out and investigated the degree to which regular voters possess knowledge of future-beneficial institutions and policies. Maybe they have, but I haven’t encountered such research myself. Instead, I claim that given the ignorance of the electorate with regard to even very basic politically relevant facts, we should expect them to be ignorant of future-beneficial institutions and policies.)
Now, we might try something like age-weighted voting. But this strikes me as an intervention that ignores the overall quality of decision-making. At best, it places comparatively more political power in the hands of people who might regard future generations more than their older counterparts. This is the sort of institutional reform that is in tension with my worries about the demand-side of politics.
I favor thinking about ways to both incentivize greater regard for future generations and improving the overall quality of decision-making. I have no settled opinions on what the eventual institutions would look like. Perhaps they would involve independent agencies acting in an advisory capacity, or perhaps they would involve novel governmental bodies tasked specifically with representing the interests of future generations, or perhaps something else entirely. Deliberative reform will probably play some role, but beyond that I don’t know. Institutional design is complicated business and we shouldn’t pretend we know in advance of serious empirical investigation what will work best. Still, I think we currently know enough to know that mere tweaks to the current voting system without improving the overall quality of decision-making will not be enough.
Thanks for the clarification, I strongly agree with the position described in this comment.