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4 - Economic Rights in the Knowledge Economy: An Instrumental Justification

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2009

Shareen Hertel  and
Lanse Minkler
By
Albino Barrera
Shareen Hertel
Affiliation:
University of Connecticut
Lanse Minkler
Affiliation:
University of Connecticut
Albino Barrera
Affiliation:
Professor of Economics and Humanities, Providence College
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Summary

JUSTIFYING ECONOMIC RIGHTS

This chapter argues that if one supports efficiency in the knowledge economy, one would also have to support economic rights. There is no consensus among scholars, philosophers, and policy makers on the justification, content, and strength of human rights. Even more intractable is the issue of whether or not economic rights exist at all. Trimiew (1997, 103–68) summarizes three strands of arguments against economic rights. First are the contentions that see an irreconcilable incompatibility between civil-political rights and economic rights. Economic rights give rise to positive obligations that may in fact infringe on the civil-political rights of others. After all, the satisfaction of economic rights entails rival consumption, because they require interpersonal transfers of real resources across economic agents. The second set of objections view the claims of economic rights as incomprehensible. For example, Cranston (1967) argues against economic rights because (a) they are culturally conditioned and therefore not truly universal, (b) they are not always of paramount ultimate value (as in the case of the oft-cited right to a paid vacation [article 24, UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights]), and (c) they are not practicable (as in the case of the right to full and gainful employment for all peoples). Finally, there are those who argue that economic rights only serve to worsen the condition they are meant to ameliorate because they may breed dependency and free-ridership.

Economic rights have been justified on the basis of both their intrinsic worth and their instrumental utility.

Type
Chapter
Information
Economic Rights
Conceptual, Measurement, and Policy Issues
 , pp. 76 - 93
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2007

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