Jeremy Bentham described the Declaration of the Rights of Man by French revolutionaries as “nonsense on stiltsâ€. Nice rhetoric, but ultimately unsuccessful. Since 1789 the idea of human rights has thrived. It now even has its own day. This year’s Human Rights Day, was dedicated to the war on poverty.
Bentham was right. The idea that we all enjoy certain rights, not because any legal system gives them to us, but simply because we are humans, is silly. But, in the 18th century at least, it was beneficial silliness.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are born equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that amongst these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.†These statements are not self-evident. They are not even true. They are gobbledygook. Yet they inspired the Constitution of the United States, one of mankind’s great achievements.
Alas, once nonsense is up and running, it is hard to rein in. Initially, our self-evident human rights were simply protections against the abuse of power. Today, entitlements to all manner of goods are making themselves evident to human rights oracles. Louise Arbour, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, claims that we have human rights “to food, to work, to healthcare and housingâ€.
This inflation has changed the politics of human rights. Whereas human rights once supported limited government, they are now invoked in favour of the welfare state and the maximal government it requires. Which is why the human rights movement, although well intentioned, has become a malign force.
In an article to mark Human Rights Day this month, Ms Arbour claimed that poverty is caused by human rights violations. It is true, of course, that if people had food, healthcare and housing, they would not live in poverty. But it is absurd to say that lacking these things causes poverty. Lacking these things is poverty. Why do millions of people lack decent food, healthcare and housing? That is the question.
The human rights lobby sees poverty as an essentially legal problem. All humans are entitled to food, healthcare, housing and so on. But countries where poverty is common have failed to enshrine these entitlements in law. If they embraced human rights, poverty would be legislated out of existence.
If you are tempted to agree, perhaps you will also like this idea. The government should enrich us by passing a law that entitles all Brits to an annual income of at least one million pounds. The difficulty, of course, is that Britain’s GDP is considerably less than one million pounds per person. It is impossible to provide everyone with this income.
The same goes for the more modest entitlements that human rights enthusiasts claim to be universal. Providing every citizen with decent food, healthcare and housing exceeds the productive capacity of many poor countries. Mauritania’s annual GDP, for example, is only $400 per person. It would be nice if Mauritanians were richer, but declaring that they should be will not help. Entitlements to wealth do not create wealth. On the contrary, they hinder wealth creation.
To see why, consider a less absurd entitlement. Suppose Gordon Brown introduced a minimum household income guarantee of £40,000. This may appear possible, since British GDP is now £52,000 per household. In fact, the policy would soon defeat itself. Only dedicated Protestants would continue to work. Those whose efforts would earn them less than £40,000 would not bother, and nor would those who earn more, given the tax rates that would be required to fund this entitlement. With mass indolence, the average household income would soon fall well below £40,000, whatever the law said we were entitled to.
Poor countries are not exempt from the perverse incentives created by entitlements. In fact, they are more vulnerable to them. Where labour is less productive, even modest entitlements will undermine the incentive to work. In Britain we can guarantee all citizens food, healthcare and housing without destroying economic incentives. But this is because we are already rich. Such entitlements would devastate less developed economies.
The causes of poverty are debated by economists. Yet most agree that property rights are essential for wealth creation. Without them, wealth cannot be accrued. And if people cannot accrue wealth, they have little incentive to create it. Why invest capital and effort in a business if you cannot feel secure in your ownership of it, and of the profits that flow from it? Communism and anarchy create poverty in the same way: by undermining property rights.
Property rights are not universal entitlements. If I own some land then you do not own it. You lack entitlements that I enjoy, such as the profits made by farming that land. Such inequalities are inherent to property rights. Which may explain why human rights activists do not care for them. In an 800-word article on fighting poverty, Ms Arbour did not once mention property rights. Instead, she lamented “unequal access to resources†— something entailed by private ownership of them.
Tens of millions of Chinese have worked their way out of poverty in recent years. It was not achieved by extending human rights law in China. Nor is it an “economic miracleâ€. It is a predictable consequence of establishing property rights.
Jamie Whyte, the author of 'Bad Thoughts: A Guide to Clear Thinking.