Rational Decision Making
The model of an agent who ranks outcomes consistently and chooses the option that best serves those rankings.
Why it matters now
The model is a useful fiction and a dangerous one. It is the backbone of every cost-benefit analysis that has ever justified a dam or a highway, and it fails whenever the costs land on people, species, or centuries left outside the ledger. Widening the ledger is not sentimentality; it is better arithmetic.
Where this is happening on Earth
- AsiaBhutan's Gross National Happiness indexA national accounting system that prices forest cover and cultural continuity alongside output, keeping the country carbon negative.
- EuropeNicholas Stern, London School of EconomicsThe Stern Review argued that conventional discounting made climate inaction look rational only by undervaluing people not yet born.
- South AmericaEcuador's rights of nature, written into the 2008 constitutionLegal standing for ecosystems changes what counts as a cost in any rational calculation made inside Ecuadorian courts.
- North AmericaElinor Ostrom, Indiana UniversityFieldwork from Maine lobster grounds to Nepali irrigation showed real communities reasoning their way to durable rules economists had declared impossible.
- AfricaGaborone Declaration for Sustainability, BotswanaTen African nations committed to natural capital accounting so that soil, water, and wildlife appear in the national books.
The idea itself
The encyclopedia entry first, then live searches at journals and magazines that keep returning current work on this specific idea.
Current reporting from around the world
Standing feeds at reputable periodicals. These stay fresh on their own, which is why they are here instead of a list of articles that would be out of date within a season.