Differences Between Private and Social
There are a number of qualitative differences between social and corporate discount rates and evaluation of projects associated with them. The governance of social project funding is different naturally, because estimating the benefits of social projects requires making ethically subtle choices about the benefits to others. For example if it was presumed that a meteor will wipe out all life in a few years the SDR is very high. Alternately if we presume that the population will have many new and wonderful choices capturing benefits (i.e. they will be more wealthy) in the future that too raises the SDR of creating any given benefit. For example, choices about the SDR of environmental protection projects, such as funding the reduction of global warming, place a greater valuation on future generations.
Read more about this topic: Social Discount Rate
Famous quotes containing the words differences, private and/or social:
“The country is fed up with children and their problems. For the first time in history, the differences in outlook between people raising children and those who are not are beginning to assume some political significance. This difference is already a part of the conflicts in local school politics. It may spread to other levels of government. Society has less time for the concerns of those who raise the young or try to teach them.”
—Joseph Featherstone (20th century)
“Mens sana in men’s sauna, in the flush
Of health and toilets, private and corporal glee,”
—Anthony Hecht (b. 1923)
“Just as modern mass production requires the standardization of commodities, so the social process requires standardization of man, and this standardization is called equality.”
—Erich Fromm (1900–1980)