One of the most often repeated ideas, generally without understanding what is at stake, is to advocate the need to take account of the interest of future generations. But in fact, this is not how we behave: we live in the moment, unconcerned about leaving to future generations colossal debts and a rotten environment. We think, like British economist J.M. Keynes, that only the present matters, because: « in the long run we are all dead »; in fact we agree with Groucho Marx, when he asks: « Why should I worry about future generations? What have they ever done for me? ».
Answers to the devastating questions of Groucho Marx are not easy and they take us to the heart of the matter: in order to understand what we owe to future generations, we must imagine a world where they do not exist. In other words, a world where, from the very start as you’re reading through, there would be no birth globally. Nowhere. Except perhaps the birth of all the children already conceived.
Such a shock would have immediate consequences: the end of any family project, the end of any projection into the future. And incidentally the closure of all maternity units.
Twenty years later, consequences will be even direr: about a quarter of all present-day humans will have disappeared; and the remaining young people will enter the workforce. All schools, middle schools, secondary schools and then all universities will be closed.
From that time on, the number of workers will begin to decline irreversibly. While the climate will keep changing, the general standard of living will be declining inexorably. Pensions funding of all those alive today, who then will be retired, will no longer be provided; same thing for public services; the debt load will not be repaid, at the expense of lenders, or will be required, at the expense of borrowers. In both cases, savers’ assets will be taxed, and there is no justification for retaining them, since there will be no one for whom it is transmitted.
Over time, the consequences will become even darker, for the last survivors of our contemporaries. Standard of living will be heading down and will be accelerating to the downside for the remaining humans, who will be struggling for their survival in a world where there will be a smaller number of people to make the economy, administration, healthcare system and public services work.
Then, in a world increasingly in disarray, where nothing will no longer work, the remaining humans, those among the living today, will be fighting to be the last survivor.
Indeed this is what one must realize: without future generations, the life of all the living today is doomed to end in hell.
Groucho Marx’s statement can only convince those who fell victim to the tyranny of the immediate, who do not think about what future generations will bring them in the coming years that could be essential.
Then, by selfishness at least, let’s protect the well-being of our descendants, as the apple of our eyes. And for that, let us innovate, eliminate carbon dioxide from our energy, reduce our debt, and become harmonious and serene, let us master our desires and follies, and strengthen family policy. And above all: let us have children and let us love them. Let us understand that altruism is one of the most critical and vital dimensions of selfishness. And vice versa.
j@attali.com