On Eternal Equity in the Fin-de-Millénaire

Abstract

Globalization leveraged ethicality to unprecedented momentum. Today's most pressing social dilemmas beyond the control of singular nation states call for attention to human ethicality to back governmental regulation. In a history of turning to natural law as a human-imbued moral compass for solving societal predicaments on a global scale in times of crises; behavioral economists currently examine the human natural drive towards intergenerational fairness. Understanding the bounds of human ethicality is key to avoid ethical downfalls on currently-emerging societal dilemmas of financial social responsibility and man-made environmental decline infringing on intergenerational equity – the fairness to provide an at least as favorable standard of living to future generations as enjoyed today. Whilst evolutionary grounded and practiced ever since, intergenerational fairness has not been attributed as a natural behavioral law – a human-imbued drive being bound by human fallibility. A whole-rounded ethical decision making anomalies frame is missing to test the applicability of the bounded ethicality paradigm onto intergenerational concerns. Psychological insights' potential to improve human intergenerational conscientiousness on financial social responsibility and environmental ethicality is underexplored. The following paper 'On Eternal Equity' thus theoretically defines intergenerational equity as a natural behavioral law, captures human ethicality bounds and system downfalls in the domains of financial social responsibility, social welfare reform of an aging Western world population as well as environmental ethicality regarding natural resources depletion and climate change. Overall, introducing intergenerational equity as a natural behavioral law advances the legal case for codifying intergenerational fairness on an international basis. Applying bounded ethicality onto financial and environmental considerations spearheads interdisciplinary behavioral law and economic models to aid on financial market predicaments, social welfare reform and environmental threats. Exploring contemporary intergenerational constraints will allow to experimentally test the generalizability and moderators of intergenerational conscientiousness. Investigating cognitive facets of intergenerational decision making innovatively guides financial social responsibility, environmental protection education and social policy implementation. Enhancing financial social responsibility, social welfare and environmental protection through discussing future-oriented public policies is aimed at alleviating future predictable economic, social and environmental crises in order to ensure a sustainable mankind.