Economic Oppression

1
Economic Oppression

• Property and Hunger

2
Amartya Sen

• Native of India, Professor of Economics and
  Philosophy at Oxford
• 1998 Nobel Laureate in Economic Science
• theory of famines
• social choice theory
• preference theory

3
3 Interpretations of Rights

• 1. Rights as Instrumental values
• rights are valuable instruments to achieve other
  goals
• 2. Rights as Constraints on others
• rights specify what others can or cannot do to
  persons intrinsically valuable
• 3. Rights as Goals
• both intrinsic and positive

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Preliminary conclusions

• 1. A right may be intrinsically valuable and yet
  still be overall not of great moral importance.
• 2. No moral assessment of a right can be
  independent of its likely consequences.

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Property Rights

• We may accept that property rights have some
  intrinsic value, but still hold that they are
  subject to tradeoffs.
• Famines caused by lack of entitlements.
• To prevent famines, it is sometimes necessary to
  violate persons rights to property in order to
  honor their right not to be hungry.

6
Famine as reductio on constraint view

• Since property rights over food are derived from
  property rights over other goods and resources
  (through production and trade), the entire system
  of rights of acquisition and transfer is
  implicated in the emergence and survival of
  hunger and starvation.

7
Economic Oppression

• the oppression of persons who lack economic
  security
• assumes that there is a positive right not to be
  hungry or to be educated or to have some other
  form of economic security
• those who hold constraint view of rights argue
  that economic oppression consists in systematic
  violations of property rights