If we have learned anything about political philosophy recently, it is that discussion of freedom of expression without reference to the politics and economics of media ownership and control is as barren as a philosophy of science that takes no notice of the history of science.
Image: London 1986 -- Sacked print press workers protest with sign saying ‘Murdoch is bad news’ Murdoch's new ‘Fortress Wapping’ headquarters. Photo -- Nic Oatridge
#Capitalism is invalid on the basis of the theory of inalienable rights. Inalienable means can't be given up or transferred even with consent. #Capitalist apologists often appeal to contractual consent to defend the system, so this changes the debate
Actualizing Human Rights: Global Inequality, Future People, and Motivation by Jos Philips, 2020
Taking a perspective from moral and political philosophy, the book focuses on two challenges to human rights that have until now received little attention, but that need to be addressed if human rights are to remain plausible as a global ideal.
This book argues that ultimately human rights can be actualized, in two senses. By answering important challenges to them, the real-world relevance of human rights can be brought out; and people worldwide can be motivated as needed for realizing human rights.
Firstly, the challenge of global inequality: how, if at all, can one be sincerely committed to human rights in a structurally greatly unequal world that produces widespread inequalities of human rights protection? Secondly, the challenge of future people: how to adequately include future people in human rights, and how to set adequate priorities between the present and the future, especially in times of climate change? The book also asks whether people worldwide can be motivated to do what it takes to realize human rights. Furthermore, it considers the common and prominent challenges of relativism and of the political abuse of human rights.
This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of human rights, political philosophy, and more broadly political theory, philosophy and the wider social sciences.
#Liberalism is skeptical "about government[s] being able to “do good” for people. Instead" the state should "maintain the conditions for people to be empowered ... to do good for themselves, for example, in establishing ... private property prerequisites for ... a market economy as emphasized in ... economic [thought] (e.g., Heyne et al. 2006, pp. 36–38)."