It is often not sufficiently appreciated how weak the presuppositions of the Opportunity Cost Argument (OCA) for Discounting are. In particular -- and in contrast to other arguments for discounting -- the OCA is less tied to a moral outlook of a consequentialist stripe. I will briefly sketch some premises that are and are not presupposed by the OCA (as they are presented in Meyer and Roser 2012) and will then focus on a number of controversial steps in this reasoning. These include: the definition of discounting; how a requirement to act efficiently can be justified in non-consequentialist outlooks; the relevance of individual saving decisions counteracting governmental saving decisions; the implications for economic methodology; and the relevance of natural resources becoming scarcer over time.
