14 - Human Rights as Public Goods

Summary

Rarely discussed in the literature, the book defines human rights as public goods. This innovative perspective connects human rights to public wealth (see Chapter 5), characterized by non-rivalry and non-excludability and assessed as “good” – not “bad” – in ethical terms. Human rights are often understood as individual claims addressed to governments or other actors while ignoring their public good character. Some examples illustrate this widespread attitude that is only challenged when the public costs of human rights repression becomes evident. Like public goods in general, human rights can be final goods (or goals to be achieved for themselves) or intermediate goods (or means to realize other goods or rights). This means that securing human rights has far-reaching positive consequences while abusing human rights generates severe public bads by also violating other human rights and causing economic and social harm. – Due to their public good character, two wide-ranging implications follow: Human rights cannot be achieved by market institutions, but need collective actions at multiple levels of society; and self-regarding motivations alone inevitably fail to establish, fulfill and guarantee human rights, whence other-regarding motivations are indispensable.