Abstract
This chapter takes up the discussion on individual rights in modern economic theory. Taking Amartya Sen’s well-known impossibility theorem as a starting point, I discuss the various approaches to solve the underlying problem and to reconcile basic liberties with general notions of social welfare and economic efficiency. It is argued that the most promising approach to overcome the liberal paradox is to weight individual positions according to a commonly shared value function. Finally, I want to show that the well-established concept of “natural” basic human rights offers an appropriate way to operationalize this valuation function that is both sufficiently specific and flexible enough for applied ethics.
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Notes
- 1.
It is interesting to note, that Lionel Robbins (1932) uses the term ‘Economics’ as a synonym for utilitarianism in his defense of economic analysis against Carlyle’s presumed critique as being a “pig-philosophy”. This becomes clear by the fact that Carlyle applied this epithet to utilitarianism, not economics as such.
- 2.
Interestingly enough, the reading in question that Sen uses in his example is D.H. Lawrence’s novel Lady Chatterly’s Lover. Nowadays, parents would be grateful if their offspring spent their time reading twentieth century English fiction.
- 3.
On the formulation of individual rights as game form see Pattaniak (1996) and the literature given therein.
- 4.
On this rather innocuous modification of the pristine example see Buchanan (1996).
- 5.
- 6.
- 7.
In what follows, I quote Locke’s two Treatises on Government as follows: the number of the treatise is given in roman numbers, followed by the chapter and the paragraph in Arabic numbers. Thus, the 5th paragraph of the fourth chapter in the second treatise is quoted by TTG II, 4,5.
- 8.
Economists typically refer to the efficiency of property rights, which leaves the problem of the distribution of private wealth unsolved. Nussbaum and Sen derive the right to property appropriation from the basic capability of a person to have control over his or her environment, this on the entitlement of a person to lead a distinct and self-determined life. Scholastic philosophers in contrast refer to the pacification of society the institute of private property brings about.
- 9.
- 10.
In his famous “Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science”, Lionel Robbins (1932) writes: “The economist is not concerned with ends as such. […] The ends may be noble or they may be base. […] Economics takes all ends for granted.” Herbert Gintis has named this axiom the “Robbins principle”.
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Althammer, J. (2017). The Economics of Nonsense Upon Stilts: Basic Human Rights and Economic Analysis. In: Rendtorff, J. (eds) Perspectives on Philosophy of Management and Business Ethics. Ethical Economy, vol 51. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-46973-7_19
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