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In a recent post, I discussed a paper I published a few days ago with several bioethicists on whether trade-offs between generations are always unjust. Since I have received numerous replies, I would like to answer the questions that have been raised and respond to the criticism against our position.
(Context: We have defended the claim that welfare trade-offs between generations are inevitable. It is thus non-sensical to claim that we should prohibit all policies that allow such a trade-off, e.g., the vaccination of children to protect the elderly.)
Today, I respond to another reply by James OBrien, who argued that Social Security is a modern pyramid scheme.
James OBrien, M.D.:
The article didn't demonstrate that SS/Medicare wasn't a pyramid scheme and didn't demonstrate that it was ethical. It only explained that we do it because we are greedy, and I agree with this. We're also evolved to kill based on any provocation, but that doesn't make it right.
The ethical argument is actually very simple... if anyone in the private sector did this, they would be in prison.
Evolutionary arguments are different from ethical arguments. We wouldn't need ethics if evolutionary behavior was ethical.
Walter Veit:
I partially agree with James here. My goal in the previous post wasn't to show that our current political structure is unjust, as James has argued, but rather that the shortcomings within our political institutions are due to our evolved human psychologies and evolved human institutions—that are necessarily short-sighted. It is important to recognize that there are always trade-offs within ethical decision-making, so one needs to be careful not to fall into simplistic thinking and to assert that wherever there is a trade-off, there must be an injustice.
Importantly, however, one should also recognize that morality itself is an evolved phenomenon, as I have argued in this peer-reviewed article in 2019. Indeed, we should be suspicious to think that ethics is independent from human evolution:
However, as I see it, the previously provided arguments are sufficient for casting doubt on the project of vindicating the objectivity of morality by pointing to a highly relativistic notion of rationality crucially depending on the social structure of society. (Walter Veit 2019)
This is why I was reluctant to assert that these trade-offs need to be considered "unjust." This very much depends on our moral views regarding the nature of unequal trade-offs and relationships more generally.
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