"Future people, after all, are people. They will exist. They will have hopes and joys and pains and regrets, just like the rest of us. They just don’t exist yet.

"But society tends to neglect the future in favor of the present. Future people are utterly disenfranchised. They can’t vote or lobby or run for public office, so politicians have scant incentive to think about them. They can’t tweet, or write articles, or march in the streets. They are the true silent majority. And though we can’t give political power to future people, we can at least give them fair consideration. We can renounce the tyranny of the present over the future and act as trustees for all of humanity, helping to create a flourishing world for the generations to come.

"We face massive problems today, and the world is full of needless suffering, but in some ways we have made remarkable progress over the past few hundred years. Three hundred years ago, the average life expectancy was less than 40 years; today, it’s over 70. More than 80 percent of the world lived in extreme poverty; now just around 10 percent does. Women were, for the most part, unable to attend universities, and the feminist movement didn’t exist. No one lived in a democracy; now over half the world does. We’ve come a long way.

"We have the power to encourage these positive trends. And we can reverse course on negative trends, too, like increases in carbon emissions and factory farming. We have the potential to build a world where everyone lives like the happiest people in the most well-off countries today." - William MacAskill

Book Excerpt: The Case for Longtermism