 Time Discounting. One important component is “time discounting”: this involves allocating less moral weight to a person’s well-being the further into the future it is. Many philosophers have been highly critical of this approach, arguing that it is objectionable to discriminate against people on the basis of when they are alive. That, it is argued, penalises people for a property that lacks any moral significance (Caney 2014b: 323–327; Parfit 1984: 480–486; Rawls 1999: 259–262). Others would demur, and some have offered communitarian defences of special obligations to those who are temporally near (de Shalit 1995).