Principles of Generational Justice

Generational Justice is justice in a particular area, namely the relations between different generations. Hence in the simplest case, maxims of generational justice could be seen as the applications of norms of general justice. These general norms are themselves deduced from moral axioms behind them. Five such axioms are presented and explained and it is shown briefly which demands arise from these principles: Principle 1: Ethical hedonism: Only the welfare of human beings and more highly developed animals is intrinsically morally relevant. Principle 2: Beneficiary universalism: All human beings (and in a limited degree more highly developed animals as well) no matter where in space and time should be equal beneficiaries of the morality of a subject. So beneficiary universalism among other things excludes temporal discounting i.e. a lower consideration of the fate of future generations. Principle 3: Prioritarianism: The moral value of an action or a norm is roughly determined by the thereby produced changes in human welfare. More precisely, though, more weight should be given to changes in welfare of subjects worse off. Principle 4: Principle of limited commitment: Moral commitment should reach at least a bit beyond socially valid moral duties, which are legally or socially sanctioned. A further increase of commitment is not a moral duty. The principle demands the maximum of what can be demanded of rational subjects and is supposed to maintain achieved standards and at the same time to raise moral commitment in the historically long term. Principle 5: Efficiency or economy principle: Moral commitment should be efficient and employed where the ratio of cost and moral benefit is the most favourable. After this normative part, Lumer points out that the present developments seems to lead to a reduction of the intergenerational savings rate (referring to pensions politics, high youth unemployment, unrestrained consumption of non-renewable resources, hardly restrained emissions of greenhouse gases). This, in the authors opinion, contradicts the principle of limited commitment, as it infringes the informal duty to maintain the intergenerational savings rate existing so far and hence is a forbidden moral step back. Developments seem to lead to a considerable lowering of welfare in the Third World countries. Therefore Lumer states that the usual justification for the consumption of non-renewable resources, namely that future generations will profit the most from the so paid progress, is not valid in these cases. Following Lumer, plausible asumptions concerning these developments imply that even if current policies are continued the next future First World generations will be still better off than the currently dominant ones and also a lot better off than future Third World generations. Therefore in the Third World countries the ratio of cost to moral benefit would be the most favourable. Besides this, Lumer argues, that many damages provoked by the greenhouse effect only become social problems because of the widespread poverty and therefore direct investments in the Third World’s development would probably be an efficient means to considerably reduce damages due to the greenhouse effect. Lumer comes to the conclusion that if these empirical hypotheses are right, according to the expounded principles, the morally most important and morally obligatory steps towards generational justice are: 1. considerable support for the development of the poorest countries, 2. the containment of the anthropogenous greenhouse effect and 3. the reduction of youth unemployment. Lumer resumes that it remains unclear how important the reduction of the consumption of resources is in proportion to these three measures.