Growth is enriching an elite and killing the planet. We need an economy based on human rights
Growth is enriching an elite and killing the planet. We need an economy based on human rights
Economic growth allows the few to grow ever-wealthier. Ending poverty and environmental catastrophe demands fresh thinking
A “human rights economy” can deliver for people and the planet because it shifts our focus from growth to humanity – grounding the purpose of the economy in fundamental, universal human values. It offers human rights as a guardrail to keep the economy on track – meeting the challenges of the climate crisis, addressing inequalities and eradicating poverty.
This proposition is not some fairytale. Concrete steps can be taken now, starting with choosing measures of progress other than gross domestic product (GDP) – which tells us nothing about the ecological or social fallout of economic activity.
And we need to start valuing what really counts. GDP has no way of accounting for the estimated 16.4bn hours spent every day worldwide on unpaid work, largely carried out by women, that underpins the global economy: caring for children, people with disabilities and older citizens.
No societal problems will ever be solved through the concentration of wealth.
The problem the article discusses is called "capitalism", and its consequences are not an "oopsie, we miscalculated!" The system is working as intended—further enriching the elites who control it.
To make serious improvements, we have to remove those elites from their positions of power, and there's the rub. They would rather go full fascist than compromise their privilege.
The people writing this articles are pretty good at describing symptoms of the deeper problems. Poverty, disposession, environmental damage, overextraction of limited resources.
But they provide you with false or even counterproductive solutions. One of the funnier quotes in this article / one of the linked articles is where they say it's as if governments have forgotten about the tobacco industry's history by bringing plastics companies on to commissions, etc. Of course, they are forgetting the actual history of social movements that have tackled exactly these problems: the socialists and quasi-socialist groups around them.
It is easy to tell that they have no plan or understanding of what to actually do because they don't actually tell you to do anything. They say more protests are needed. Who is going to organize them, what are their demands, and how will they gain and wield leverage? They say companies shouldn't be on regulatory boards. Sounds great. Why are they there in the first place and what is your plan for fighting them? They say that a GDP-focused economy causes these issues. Well that's literally capitalism, the dominant global economic system. The only people who have ever directly combatted capitalism are socialists but this is not named. Instead we see "human rights" - based on what? Big business CEO over here and his 50 think tanks say no and that your country will lose $300 million in jobs if you oppose them. What are you going to do about it?
Fundamentally, the angle that we need to organize the economy around human need is true. But doing so is not going to happen by simply appreciating human rights and going to protests or voting. Those are literally all of the things that the ruling class responsible for this mess pay their NGOs and PR people to say to us. This is because they are ineffective or even counterproductive. For example, the concept of human rights is used very selectively, it functions primarily as a propaganda tool. In terms of what actually happens as a result of human rights discourse it tends to be in the interests of incredibly violent imperialistic capital. A NATO general citing human rights concerns so they can do a coups, plunge millions into poverty, and bring open air slave markets back to Africa. "Human Rights" discourse is Western-centric and it is nearly always implied that Western countries have good records and everyone else has bad records, but this is only maintained through selective memories and propaganda. The global system that creates the problems described in this article have their seat in the neocolonial countries, the Western countries with allegedly better human rights records. The countries that will implicitly respond to protest and government lobbying despite this literally never working to achieve this goal.
The problems described in this article are produced by the essential functions of capitalism. Growth is sought to maximize profits, which capitalists are compelled to do by the system itself. It cannot be reformed via any of the suggested approaches. First because it is fundamental to the basic mechanisms of the capitalist system. Second because they are the ruling class and they're not just going to let you protest into their gone or vote them out.
To combat the system, we must read history, understand politics abs economics, and organize together so that when we do need actions - including but not limited to protests - we are not caught off-guard by the responses because we listened to the advice of academics that have never organized anything and who refuse to read the history of anti-capitalism.
. Instead we see “human rights” - based on what?
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