The Rationality of a Safe Minimum Standard

Michael C. Farmer and Alan Randall

Land Economics, 1997, vol. 73, issue 3, 287-302

Abstract: The Safe Minimum Standard (SMS) is a policy shift to safety defaults to forestall irreversible outcomes. Critics charge an inconsistency: what justifies "business as usual" cannot also justify switching to the SMS. Currently the SMS is only a procedural shift where economic optimality procedures are buttressed by extra-special focus on uncertainty. Yet social welfare function may not be complete enough, warranting a more fundamental SMS shift. Numerous moral positions support this SMS approach. This SMS also operationalizes the intolerable cost as a trigger point, noting societies with lower tolerance for sacrifice must trigger the SMS earlier.

Date: 1997
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