Discounting the Future: The Ascendancy of a Political Technology

by Liliana Doganova

A pioneering exploration of the defining traits and contradictions of our relationship to the future through the lens of discounting

Forest fires, droughts, and rising sea levels beg a nagging have we lost our capacity to act on the future? Liliana Doganova’s book sheds new light on this anxious query. It argues that our relationship to the future has been trapped in the gears of a device called discounting. While its incidence remains little known, discounting has long been entrenched in market and policy practices, shaping the ways firms and governments look to the future and make decisions accordingly. Thus, a sociological account of discounting formulas has become urgent.

Discounting means valuing things through the flows of costs and benefits that they are likely to generate in the future, with these future flows being literally dis-counted as they are translated in the present. How have we come to think of the future, and of valuation, in such terms? Building on original empirical research in the historical sociology of discounting, Doganova takes us to some of the sites and moments in which discounting took shape and gained valuation of European forests in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; economic theories devised in the early 1900s; debates over business strategies in the postwar era; investor-state disputes over the nationalization of natural resources; and drug development in the biopharmaceutical industry today. Weaving these threads together, the book pleads for an understanding of discounting as a political technology, and of the future as a contested domain.

Genres: Politics, Economics, History

336 pages, Hardcover

Published February 13, 2024

Reviews

[Thomas Shevis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Exceptional analysis of why investment in a sustainable future seems to be a non-starter for so many corporations and governments. The author brilliantly lays out the evolution of discounting over time and how it has been challenged constantly, but slightly tweaked and re-inserted into economic literature. The results of valuation through discounting have been an unwillingness to invest in the long-term future. Whether it be sustainable forestry, drug research and manufacturing, or, especially now, climate change mitigation, discounting both devalues the future compared to the present, and also makes the present beholden to the future, as the present value of anything is made solely bound to the future income it can generate. The author goes to lengths to show that discounting is very likely not going away, and how each piece of the formula is highly political and subjective. With this in mind, the author references Kim Stanley Robinson's book, Ministry for the Future, and affirms that we can use discounting against those who would rather do nothing to mitigate climate disaster, through thr very nature of its subjectivity.

[Carson T · Rating 5 out of 5]

a convincing account of how we arrived at a point where all of our decisions feel short sighted, the section about discounting arising from forestry was an interesting historical note I never knew about and the analysis for how discounting factors have become our framework for important decision making is spot on

[Ashley Y · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this to write a book review. Though very repetitive and took probably half the book to get to the main points, I actually enjoyed this book and it made me view corporations/economics differently. I think many of her comments and concerns about discounting are valid, though this was my first time learning about the concept.