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system, I am amazed not by defection from standards—betrayal, greed, theft, carelessness, or laziness—but by the contrary, by the fact that all these ills are still infrequent enough to draw strong negative comment when they occur, and infrequent enough to allow social and economic relationships to be mainly fruitful. In America, we have done much to undermine standards, through complex ownership schemes, exploitation schemes, misleading advertising, emphasis on financial rewards and glorification of greed; yet the system of affiliations and social norms has proved astonishingly resilient. How much more stress this network can take is a good question. Here is some prescriptive advice: Let’s not find out!

In thinking about freedom versus regulation, we need to recognize the importance of standards, and to prescribe by law or regulation only those rule systems that will abet the development of internalized standards. Unless most players adhere to a relevant standard, enforcement will be costly and impracticable; and in any case, the variety of possible deviations cannot be foreseen and proscribed. Yet law and regulation can promote or reinforce standards. We seem, as this book is written, to be at a critical juncture in history, where standards supported by broad-based affiliations can emerge and grow stronger, or can disappear into a web of inter-group conflict.

Intergenerational Goals

From the present viewpoint, having environmental goals, including ones that may have a major impact on future generations (e.g., limiting the quantity of greenhouse gas that we are emitting today because we now know they will remain in the atmosphere even after we die and after negatively affecting subsequent generations), is just as rational as any other goal category. One advantage of considering multiple goal categories is the ability to recognize multiple relationships of goals to time. From an intuitive standpoint, some goals have intrinsic short time horizons—today’s lunch or dinner. Some have intermediate or long horizons, and some of the latter are acute (remodeling a kitchen, once achieved, is over) while some are chronic (maintaining a friendship). Still other goals are repeated, with various desired temporal frequencies. Many environmental goals have psychological time stamps only for their initial achievement, not for later consumption. Clearing pollution in a given place may happen in a month or in ten years, but after that, it is timeless.

Economic analysis of environmental change requires a standard of rationality that takes account of these inter-temporal complications. Rationality demands that the evaluation of alternative plans take account of the multiple goals across time, their time stamps or timelessness, and the differences in impatience across goal categories.

Criticizing Goals

In traditional utility theory, specific endgoals are not to be challenged. Wanting to climb the Matterhorn mountain, one of the highest peaks in the Alps, or to collect yogurt containers for every brand sold worldwide could be seen as totally irrational by others who have different goals in their life. Constructed choice leaves two doors at least a bit ajar, through which criticism can enter: (1) People do give each other prescriptive advice about goals; and (2) research shows that goals differ in the extent to which people who pursue them are happy. Before starting to criticize the goals of others, however, we might do well to gain some understanding of the origin of various goals. One of the most basic questions is, Do people choose goals voluntarily? Or do people adopt goals without any choice process, perhaps only gradually becoming conscious of pursuing a goal? Furthermore, how are goals abandoned? Goal abandonment is one of the central phenomena of human aging, and successful abandonment of infeasible goals may be a key element of rationality.

RATIONALITY IN FLUX

Economic analyses have been based on Plato’s notion of a skillful weigher: To evaluate a plan, one first assigns utilities to every type of pain or pleasure that