ublic policy issues to explain very specific domains. For example, Solum (2001: 165-172) introduced the four-quadrant matrix that allows for a better understanding of intergenerational duties in the specific policy. The proposed quadrant consists of the two axes: (1) the direction of the duty in time (backward-looking duties and forward-looking duties), and (2) whether duties are contemporaneous (owed while the older and younger generations coexist) or non-contemporaneous (owed to the unborn or deceased). Each intersection revealed that social security policies involve the duty of the younger working generation to finance benefits for the elderly, while environmental policies entail the obligation of the current generation not to harm unborn future generations. The health care finance issue also concerns tension between the old and those not yet old in present generations (Frederickson, 1994: 457). Frederickson (1994) examined three cases related to the treatment of the future or future generations: capital bonding for schools, natural resource depletion, and social security entitlement.
It is worth noting that financial resources often represent the value of other resources. Any policy issues involving future citizens always concern different types of capital, including financial, natural, human, and social resources. In this regard, financial accountability has been central to discussion related to the allocation, disbursement, and utilization of public resources in the long term. For example, large increases in government debt can be a result of a range of various government policies and programs, but it is often framed as a financial burden shifted from a profligate present generation to voiceless unborn generations (Hart and Cornia, 1994).
How can it be addressed?
The last step will be to explore practical ways to account for neglected future citizens. Frederickson (1994: 463) argued that public officials should use their “creative problem-solving” skills to find policies that are likely to have “a neutral effect on future generations” by avoiding frontload benefits and backload costs based on a cost-benefit intergenerational matrix. Hart and Cornia (1994: 2368) proposed a normative term, “intergenerational stewardship,” and defined it to involve “matters more of prudent judgment and passionate commitment … than of rigorous analytic precision.” The three major considerations include (1) future-oriented benevolence to “care deeply about the lives of those of the future,” (2) future orientation which requires “imagination … beyond the ability to make linear extrapolations from past trends,” and (3) decisions for the future made from “the correct moral orientation combined with a futurist orientation” (Hart and Cornia, 1994: 2383-85). In addition, they highlighted “an essence of reciprocal trust” of the public to be reciprocally accountable (Hart and Cornia, 1994: 2383).
Lewis (2006: 698) suggested conceptualizing the public interest as an ong
