Mary Robinson & Amartya Sen

Human memory is short when it isn't shit. Irish intellectuals know that the colonization of their country was often justified on the grounds that the Catholic natives, left to themselves, would have been idle and even poorer than they were under English Protestant rule. 

Yet, in 1997, Mary Robinson, a former President of Ireland and the then UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, stated that ‘Poverty itself is a violation of numerous basic human rights’.

This was a racist, Eurocentric view. 'Natives' were thriftless and idle and often naked and inclined to sexual shenanigans. It was the duty of the Protestant European to go and kill those natives and to take away any nice things they might own till they understood that they were very poor and needed to go work on Whitey's plantation six days of the week while praying in the Chapel on the seventh. 

If poverty is a crime then there must be a 'Poor Law' of the Elizabethan sort. Those with no visible means of support must be confined in a 'Work House' and the sexes must be segregated because a poor woman who has a baby is adding to the number of the destitute. Also, if some charitable plutocrat wants cheap labor for his plantation in Australia, he is welcome to buy a shipload of convicts who would be indentured to him for a term of years. 

Robinson was a barrister. Why was she talking such utter bollocks? The answer is that once you work for the UN, you are allowed to do nothing else except talk worthless bollocks. Robinson got her comeuppance when the Durban anti-racism conference was hijacked by the Muslims and turned into an anti-semitic, but also anti-American, hate fest. She resigned in ignominy. Colin Powell had wanted the Durban conference to address genuine racial issues- including the historic legacy of the slave trade. Instead the OIC hijacked the event because Robinson had been supine in the face of Iranian aggression. Then 9/11 happened and suddenly the Islamic nations became very quiet and sweet. 

What is the point of saying stuff like 'Poverty violates Human Rights'? The answer is that either you are a virtue signaling cretin or what you actually mean is 'Jews are Rich. Kill them. Steal their nice shiny stuff. Do it now. You know you want to.' The problem is that Jews are perfectly able to defend themselves. Also, Israel exports useful things- whereas the Palestinians exported stupidity and terrorism. Thus, smart countries in the region get on well with Israel but expel or otherwise discriminate against their own Palestinian refugees. 

I suppose, back in the Nineties, the 'rights based' approach seemed a smart way to force Governments in the West to hand over more money for poverty alleviation at home and Development Aid abroad. Then people started to notice that market based reforms lifted people out of poverty very much more quickly and effectively. This was not a matter where lawyers or judges could do anything useful. All that banging on about human rights achieved was counter-productive shit like clamoring for crazy Jihadi nutjobs to be released from Gitmo so they could kill yet more innocent people. In other words, what Michael Polanyi called 'moral inversion'- i.e. thinking your own people are the only true sinners and everybody else has been harmed by your folk- becomes the terminus of every virtue signaling career path. But this is obviously stupid. What's more it magnifies your own power- or that of your ancestors. It's like me saying tearfully 'It's my fault that COVID has killed so many people. When I was 17, I should have taken a week off work to discover a universal cure for any kind of viral infection. Sadly, I preferred to spend that time discovering how to be a truly magnificent lover. Why not send your wife to me so I prove what I say?' Of course, I only say this to pigeons because they don't tend to blacken your eye if you mention your plans for their wives. Still, they do shit copiously on me. That must count for something. 

Returning to the notion of poverty being either a cause or consequence of human rights violations, we are immediately struck by the fact that any attempt to quantify or categorize such violations captures not just things we regard an unconscionable but also things which we know are the swiftest and best path out of poverty.  The same may be said for 'social inclusion' described by the European Foundation as “the process through which individuals or groups are wholly or partially excluded from full participation in the society in which they live”. It is a fact that people go without food or move to a place where they will initially feel excluded simply so as to become very very rich. That's why I've decided to stop eating till I become as slim as Sharukh. Then I'm going to become an undocumented migrant to Hollywood and...have you seen the film 'Pretty Woman'? I'm the Julia Roberts character. Soon I'll be richer than Oprah. 

It is frequently asserted that there are legally binding human rights with respect to poverty, social exclusion etc. This is not in fact the case. There are Universal Declarations but the signatories say they are recognizing ethical but not legal rights. One may as well say 'I believe all beings have the right to be considered equally beautiful and equally smart.' This isn't a justiciable right at all. It is just a description of an ideal world where nobody dies and everybody has a Butler. 

The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), which is as utterly useless as its name suggests, maintains that “Poverty can be defined equivalently as either the failure of basic freedoms – from the perspective of capabilities- or the non-fulfillment of rights to those freedoms – from the perspective of human rights.”

This is false. A rich man might lose 'basic freedoms' by reason of incapacitating illness. A court may appoint a conservator or guardian- but then again it may not have jurisdiction or else its judgment may be ineffective for some other reason. Poverty can be defined in terms of Income for any particular purpose. Similarly incapacity can be defined medically for a specific purpose. But they are not equivalent or interchangeable. Only a Sen-tentious cretin would think otherwise. 

What of 'non-fulfillment' of 'rights to freedoms'? What does it mean? Well, if 'fulfillment' is possible a remedy exists. The next question is whether there is an obligation-holder under a bond of law? Furthermore, is the obligation 'incentive-compatible'- i.e. is it in the interest of the person tasked with providing the remedy to actually do so? The answer is, if the rights-holder- considered as a class- has a countervailing power over the remedy-provider then, sure, the thing will exist even in the absence of Law Courts. Thus, for reputational reasons, a merchant may give a refund even if no law obliges him to do so. He is building up consumer 'good-will'. One sure way to destroy such 'incentive compatible' mechanisms is to thoughtlessly increase the class of rights-holders. One could say 'I abolish poverty by making it obligatory on every rich person to provide food and housing and education for every poor person in their neighborhood.' What would be the outcome? The rich would flee. Poverty would increase. 

Stupid, though it may be, the OHCHR knows this. They say 'non-fulfillment of human rights constitutes poverty only when:

• The human rights involved are those that correspond to the capabilities that are considered basic by a given society; 

so no schools if your society is Boko Haram. On the other hand, solving the problem of hunger by eating your neighbor is cool if you live in the Cannibal isles. 

and

• Inadequate command over economic resources plays a role in the causal chain leading to the non-fulfillment of human rights

The problem here is 'poverty' means 'inadequate command over economic resources'. Thus these cretins are saying poverty is constituted by poverty! But even there they are wrong. Why? We don't live in a one-period economy. We may have adequate command of economic resources but we may do really stupid shit with those resources. The result will still be poverty. Ask the Venezuelans. 

The OHCHR argues that the widespread use of Sen’s “capability approach” is an appropriate conceptualization of poverty from a human rights perspective and that there is a “natural transition from capabilities to rights”.

This is false. Chavez, from a 'capabilities' perspective, might have looked like he was enhancing economic human rights though he was obviously curtailing political rights. But the 'natural transition' was to a fucking failed state which a quarter of the working population has had to flee. 

The focus on human freedom is the common element that links the two approaches according to them.

Sen may claim that capabilities are linked to freedoms. But one could equally say that capabilities are linked to slavery. Yes, if you have the capability to walk then you don't have the 'unfreedom' of being a cripple. But equally, you might be enslaved precisely because you can walk while the cripple is left alone.

Hohfeldian 'incidents' attach to 'rights'. That's what makes them justiciable. You can gain freedom- e.g. the right to leave home and take a job and marry whom you please- by showing you are above a certain age and meet other relevant criteria. By contrast, having or lacking a capability does not by itself involve any Hohfeldian incidents. Something more, of a justiciable nature, must exist for 'freedom' to be meaningful in this context. Thus, the fact that I'm as stupid as shit is not enough to get me put under the care of a guardian. It has to be shown that I pose a risk to myself or others by reason of my determination to starve myself and then become a Hollywood star. Since, my method of starving myself involves eating lots of pizza, I am not currently in danger of malnutrition. On the other hand, sooner of later, Netflix is bound to take note of my Youtube videos and give me a starring role in 'Pretty Woman- the sequel'. 

No doubt, in India, there was a tradition of holding 'Liberation' or 'Moksha' as meaning something nobody really cares about- viz. freedom from being embodied or having to spend eternity in paradise. But Indians showed they didn't want that sort of metaphysical freedom. They just wanted Whitey to fuck off so that Brown people could move into their nice Bungalows and cushy jobs. 

 They explain that under the capability approach, poverty is “the failure of basic capabilities to reach certain minimally acceptable levels”

Fuck does this mean? Any cretin has the basic capability to write shite like Sen. But most are stuck doing shitty jobs in Kolkata coz they didn't have a daddy who could send them to Cambridge. Sad. Thankfully, Sen will convince Mary Robinson and Clinton and so forth to give Ivy League professorships to all the other cretins in Kolkata and so they won't be poor. Nothing less is acceptable. Why Socioproctology is not being taught at Haravard and Yule? Is it due to I iz bleck? Mary Robinson should kindly take action. Why some fucking Marathi named Varadkar was made President of Iyer-land? Job should have been given to me, due to I drink plenty Guinness and Jameson and often have long conversations with leprechauns. 

and it is also “the absence or inadequate realization of certain basic freedoms”.

The moment you say freedom has a teleology- i.e. a 'realization'- you can get rid of the freedom and say 'we are implementing what you ought to have chosen had you been free to do so. What are you complaining about? Don't you understand that you ought to want to be a woman. That's why we cut your bollocks off. Anyway, women live longer than men- so we've actually done you a favor.'