World Poverty and Human Rights

Some 2.5 billion human beings live in severe poverty, deprived of such essentials as adequate nutrition, safe drinking water, basic sanitation, adequate shelter, literacy, and basic health care. One third of all human deaths are from poverty-related causes: 18 million annually, including over 10 million children under five. However huge in human terms, the world poverty problem is tiny economically. Just 1 percent of the national incomes of the high-income countries would suffice to end severe poverty worldwide. Yet, these countries, unwilling to bear an opportunity cost of this magnitude, continue to impose a grievously unjust global institutional order that foreseeably and avoidably perpetuates the catastrophe. Most citizens of affluent countries believe that we are doing nothing wrong. Thomas Pogge seeks to explain how this belief is sustained. He analyses how our moral and economic theorizing and our global economic order have adapted to make us appear disconnected from massive poverty abroad. Dispelling the illusion, he also offers a modest, widely sharable standard of global economic justice and makes detailed, realistic proposals toward fulfilling it. Thoroughly updated, the second edition of this classic book incorporates responses to critics and a new chapter introducing Pogge's current work on pharmaceutical patent reform.

Thomas Pogge is Professor of Philosophy and International Affairs at Yale University, Professorial Fellow in the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at the Australian National University, Research Director in the Centre for the Study of Mind in Nature at the University of Oslo, and Adjunct Professor in the Centre for Professional Ethics at the University of Central Lancashire.

General Introduction	p. 1
Some cautions about our moral judgments	p. 2
Four easy reasons to ignore world poverty	p. 7
Sophisticated defenses of our acquiescence in world poverty	p. 13
Does our new global economic order really not harm the poor?	p. 18
Responsibilities and reforms	p. 26
Human Flourishing and Universal Justice	p. 33
Introduction	p. 33
Social justice	p. 37
Paternalism	p. 40
Justice in first approximation	p. 43
Essential refinements	p. 45
Human rights	p. 50
Specification of human rights and responsibilities for their realization	p. 54
Conclusion	p. 56
How Should Human Rights be Conceived?	p. 58
Introduction	p. 58
From natural law to rights	p. 60
From natural rights to human rights	p. 62
Official disrespect	p. 65
The libertarian critique of social and economic rights	p. 70
The critique of social and economic rights as "manifesto rights"	p. 73
Disputes about kinds of human rights	p. 75
Loopholes in Moralities	p. 77
Introduction	p. 77
Types of incentives	p. 79
Loopholes	p. 81
Social arrangements	p. 82
Case 1: the converted apartment building	p. 83
Case 2: the homelands policy of white South Africa	p. 86
An objection	p. 88
Strengthening	p. 89
Fictional histories	p. 91
Puzzles of equivalence	p. 93
Conclusion	p. 95
Moral Universalism and Global Economic Justice	p. 97
Introduction	p. 97
Moral universalism	p. 98
Our moral assessments of national and global economic orders	p. 100
Some factual background about the global economic order	p. 102
Conceptions of national and global economic justice contrasted	p. 106
Moral universalism and David Miller's contextualism	p. 108
Contextualist moral universalism and John Rawls's moral conception	p. 110
Rationalizing divergent moral assessments through a double standard	p. 114
Rationalizing divergent moral assessments without a double standard	p. 116
The causal role of global institutions in the persistence of severe poverty	p. 118
Conclusion	p. 122
The Bounds of Nationalism	p. 124
Introduction	p. 124
Common nationalism: priority for the interests of compatriots	p. 126
Lofty nationalism: the justice-for-compatriots priority	p. 135
Explanatory nationalism: the deep significance of national borders	p. 145
Conclusion	p. 150
Achieving Democracy	p. 152
Introduction	p. 152
The structure of the problem faced by fledgling democracies	p. 154
Reducing the expected rewards of coups d'etat	p. 158
Undermining the borrowing privilege of authoritarian predators	p. 159
Undermining the resource privilege of authoritarian predators	p. 168
Conclusion	p. 173
Cosmopolitanism and Sovereignty	p. 174
Introduction	p. 174
Institutional cosmopolitanism based on human rights	p. 175
The idea of state sovereignty	p. 183
Some main reasons for a vertical dispersal of sovereignty	p. 187
The shaping and reshaping of political units	p. 196
Conclusion	p. 201
Eradicating Systemic Poverty: Brief for a Global Resources Dividend	p. 202
Introduction	p. 202
Radical inequality and our responsibility	p. 203
Three grounds of injustice	p. 205
A moderate proposal	p. 210
The moral argument for the proposed reform	p. 214
Is the reform proposal realistic?	p. 216
Conclusion	p. 220
Pharmaceutical Innovation: Must We Exclude the Poor?	p. 222
Introduction	p. 222
The TRIPS Agreement and its aftermath	p. 224
The argument from beneficial consequences	p. 230
Toward a better way of stimulating research and development of essential medicines	p. 236
Differential pricing	p. 238
The public-good strategy for extending access to essential medicines	p. 240
A full-pull plan for the provision of pharmaceuticals	p. 244
Specifying and implementing the basic full-pull idea	p. 253
Justifying the plan to affluent citizens and their representatives	p. 256
Last Words	p. 262
Notes	p. 265
Bibliography	p. 314
Index	p. 328
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

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World Poverty and Human Rights

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