{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.01914191419141914, 'fraction_numerical': 0.0, 'mean_word_length': 5.5344827586206895, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Intergenerational Cooperation and the Social Contract

John Rawls made the enormously influential suggestion that society can be conceived of as a “cooperative venture for mutual advantage,” governed by a “theory of justice,” which is a set of principles that specify an acceptable division of the “benefits and burdens of cooperation.” It follows, however, that if there are no opportunities for mutually advantageous cooperation in a particular domain of social interaction, then these interactions cannot be governed by principles of justice. Certain commentators have argued that this analysis precludes the application of Rawlsian-style contract theory to questions of intergenerational justice, on the grounds that there can be no reciprocity between non-contemporaneous generations, and thus no possibility of intergenerational cooperation. Yet despite having become influential in the literature, this claim is incorrect, being based upon an overly narrow, direct conception of reciprocity. Many systems of cooperation, both in nature and in human society, are based on indirect reciprocity, where the individual from whom a benefit is received need not be the same as the individual to whom a benefit is provided. Once the possibility of indirect reciprocity is taken into account, one can see that there is no obstacle to the development of systems of intergenerational cooperation. The analysis of such systems provides the foundation for a contractual approach to questions of intergenerational justice.