Economics Against Human Rights

Manuel Branco

Economics Working Papers from University of Évora, Department of Economics (Portugal)

Abstract: It is said that economics value individual and economic freedom and from that many hastily conclude that mainstream economics value human rights. The purpose of this paper is to show that on the contrary mainstream economics is fundamentally contradictory with many human rights especially Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. The main reason for this is that mainstream economics and human rights have trouble in communicating, the latter speaking the rights language and the former the needs language. Within the needs language, capability to pay is the key question whereas within the rights language, entitlement is. If in the first case exclusion and inequality are acceptable in the second case the only acceptable situation is the one characterized by inclusion and equality. In other words goods and services can be unequally distributed, rights cannot. For this reason one cannot count on the market alone to ensure economic, social and cultural rights. Therefore, considering the introduction of different logics into the economic equation as unbearable interferences with economic logic, mainstream economics stands against human rights. In order to give a better illustration of this contradiction the particular conflicts between economics and the right to work, the right to water and the right to social security will be presented. The main conclusion of this paper is that in order to favour human rights economics should either suffer a paradigmatic revolution or accept to play just a supporting role in the process of global development.

Keywords: Human Rights; Economic Theory; Social Utility; Rights-Approach; Right to Work; Social Security (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A1 B4 H4 H5 I3 J8 K0 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 14 pages
Date: 2007
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hap, nep-hpe, nep-law and nep-pke
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:evo:wpecon:02_2007

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