In his Blog, Nicholas Decker puts well one public economics implication of this, in words particularly compatible with the view I outline in the post above:
I think it isn’t clear that we are an “agent”. We are, rather, numerous people, which we like, but not as much as we like ourselves now. When we behave irresponsibly now, we are in some sense harming someone who isn’t us. We are not the same person as we were in the past. We do care, a bit, but imperfectly. Thus, society can and should force us to save more and behave more the benefit of our future selves, and a higher market interest rate is a sign of nothing more than selfishness.
In his Blog, Nicholas Decker puts well one public economics implication of this, in words particularly compatible with the view I outline in the post above: