“In their work on scarcity, US academics Eldar Shafir and Sendhil Mullainathan noted that time scarcity has the effect of capturing decisionmakers in “firefighting traps” where they focus on the urgent at the expense of what is more important over the long term.
If the human mind plays a part, then so too does our (unwritten) constitution, which prioritises today’s taxpayers while lacking the mechanisms to bind us to long-term commitments. Policy “solutions” to long-term challenges regularly end up passing along costs to younger or future generations, often in the form of government debt. It is bias towards the present such as this that prompted the philosopher Roman Krznaric to talk of “the tyranny of the now”.
If it feels like we are staggering from crisis to crisis, it is not by accident or quirk of the system, but because our model incentivises governments to kick the can down the road on the big issues of our era—from deep demographic shifts to food insecurity.”
Minister for the future: Introduction | Prospect Magazine
https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/politics/minister-for-the-future-introduction
via Instapaper
If the human mind plays a part, then so too does our (unwritten) constitution, which prioritises today’s taxpayers while lacking the mechanisms to bind us to long-term commitments. Policy “solutions” to long-term challenges regularly end up passing along costs to younger or future generations, often in the form of government debt. It is bias towards the present such as this that prompted the philosopher Roman Krznaric to talk of “the tyranny of the now”.
If it feels like we are staggering from crisis to crisis, it is not by accident or quirk of the system, but because our model incentivises governments to kick the can down the road on the big issues of our era—from deep demographic shifts to food insecurity.”
Minister for the future: Introduction | Prospect Magazine
https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/politics/minister-for-the-future-introduction
via Instapaper