# Intergenerational Justice *Designing for the wellbeing of future generations by extending moral consideration across time and creating systems that preserve options and capabilities.* ## Core Tenets - **Extended Moral Horizon**: Considering impacts on beings not yet born as ethically relevant - **Option Preservation**: Maintaining the widest possible range of choices for future generations - **Capability Maintenance**: Ensuring critical capabilities remain available over time - **Fair Inheritance**: Passing on natural and social capital at least as rich as what was received - **Long-Term Thinking**: Explicitly incorporating distant futures in present decision-making ## Implementation Principles 1. **Establish Future Representation**: Create mechanisms for future generations to have voice in current decisions 2. **Apply Precautionary Approach**: Avoid irreversible harms when outcomes are uncertain 3. **Create Commitment Devices**: Design mechanisms that bind present actions to future wellbeing 4. **Maintain Knowledge Continuity**: Ensure critical information persists across generations 5. **Balance Present and Future Needs**: Find equilibrium between addressing immediate concerns and long-term flourishing ## Applications Across Pillars - **Human Wellbeing**: Social systems that sustain care relationships across generations - **Biosphere Stewardship**: Ecological management that maintains or enhances natural capital - **Refinement**: Knowledge commons that preserve crucial information for future generations - **Just Governance**: Decision rights that explicitly include consideration of future impacts ## Intergenerational Justice in Token Systems Token systems designed with intergenerational justice include: - **Time-Locked Commitments**: Resources dedicated to future-oriented purposes - **Long-Duration Staking**: Governance mechanisms rewarding long-term perspective - **Generational Inheritance Protocols**: Systems for transmitting digital assets and rights across generations - **Option Value Tokens**: Representations of preserved future possibilities - **Knowledge Preservation DAOs**: Organizations dedicated to maintaining critical information ## Related Principles - [[Security as Guarantee]] - [[Resilience Through Diversity]] - [[Self-Healing Systems Design]] - [[Proportionality]] ## Philosophical Foundation The principle of Intergenerational Justice draws from: - Indigenous seven-generation thinking - Environmental ethics and future generations theory - Sustainability science - Rawlsian concepts of justice behind a "veil of ignorance" - Long-termism philosophy - Intergenerational common pool resource management --- *This principle guides the creation of systems that treat the future as a moral community deserving consideration in present decisions, designing token mechanisms that extend care, justice, and flourishing across temporal boundaries.*