Conservationists have long argued that the free market neglects the needs of future generations. Economists who have examined this argument have stressed the dubious realism of any rigorous formulation of the conservationist position, but relatively little attention has been paid to the implications of policies designed to increase the weight given to future demands. Scott has conjectured that such policies might speed exhaustion of mineral resources. If he is correct, the usual conservationist argument that neglect of the future is equivalent to a too rapid use of resources would no longer hold. This article seeks to provide a rigorous proof of Scott's hypothesis.The economic literature has shown that all rigorous definitions of neglect of the future involve the use of higher than “desirable” interest rates. To explore the consequences of such interest rates, one requires a theory of how resource producers act. Such guidance is provided by the Gray-Hotelling pure theory of exhaustion. A simple test of the basic question is provided by showing how an industry that behaves according to theory would alter its actions if interest rates were lowered.Section III of this paper provides such a test. The first two sections provide the necessary preliminaries—examination of the justifications given for the contention that interest rates are too high, and a brief explanation of the pure theory of exhaustion. The final section discusses further implications of the basic theorem set out in Section III.