 Claiming that we can violate the rights of future people now does not, however, imply that future people have rights now (though see Partridge 1990: 54–55, who suggests that future people have rights in the present). That implication would hold only if it were conceded that presently existing rights alone constrain present action. But we can safely assume, first, that future people will be bearers of rights in the future, second, that the rights they have will be determined by the interests they have then, and third, that our present actions and policies can affect their interests. If we can violate a person’s rights by frustrating her interests severely, and if we can so severely frustrate such interests of future people, we can violate their future rights (see Hoerster 1991: 98–102). Their future existence itself is thus insufficient to ground the claim that we cannot now violate the rights of future persons.