Talk by Bruce G. Carruthers, Northwestern University

Practical Long-Termism: Beyond Philosophy to Practice

Public policy in relation to climate change requires people to consider future costs and benefits, and to bring the future into the present. Given the seriousness of the climate problem, people have to weigh circumstances and consequences far beyond their own life-times and those of their children. But as Keynes pointed out, in the long run we are all dead, so why worry about the future? Most public policy now incorporates future costs and benefits in decision-making using a discount rate to calculate net present value. A high rate means that the future is unimportant; a low rate means that the future matters a lot. Thus, debate centers around the appropriate discount rate, and “longtermist” philosophers argue that discount rates should be set to zero.  

I develop an institutional perspective that augments current formulaic approaches by documenting instances of social arrangements where decision-makers have successfully included the interests of future generations and have, in effect, ignored Keynes about the long run. I consider several historical examples, including both successes and failures, to discern their common elements, motivating justifications, underlying patterns, and the critical role played by fiduciaries. These examples include early modern forestry management, construction of gothic cathedrals, nuclear waste depositories, family trusts and estate planning, and conservation easements.

Bruce G. Carruthers is the John D. MacArthur Professor of Sociology at Northwestern University and a Long-term Fellow at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study. He received his PhD from the University of Chicago in 1991 and works in the areas of economic sociology, comparative-historical sociology, and the sociology of law, with research funding from the National Science Foundation, the American Bar Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation, the Institute for New Economic Thinking, and the Tobin Project. He has written numerous articles as well as six books, the most recent published in 2022 by Princeton University Press and entitled The Economy of Promises: Trust, Power, and Credit in America. Carruthers has been a visiting fellow at the Russell Sage Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, the Kluge Center at the Library of Congress, the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study, and was the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship. Recently, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

The talk is part of the SCANCOR Morning Lectures on Institutional Analysis 2024 from Aug. 26th to 30th. Participation in the morning lectures is free of charge. For those seeking to attend, we kindly ask to register on our website.