Greed and Profit-Seeking

Greed, defined as 'taking too much', constitutes both a social and a psychological imbalance, and, thus, can be classified as a Vice on two grounds.  Thus, the proposition 'Greed is good'  does not stand up well to serious Moral scrutiny.  Now, insofar as profit-seeking aims at the acquisition of more than one needs, and entails the loss by another of a vital good, it can only be classified as Greed, and, hence, as a Vice.  So, since profit-seeking is the motor of Capitalism, the implicit principle of Economic systems such as that of the U. S., 'Capitalism is good', may likewise have difficulty standing up well to serious Moral scrutiny, i. e. even if, as Smith posits, an Invisible Hand corrects any social imbalance, it leaves uncorrected the correlative psychological disorder.

Might, Right, Greed

Probably the strongest argument against the previously discussed denial of a Right to be greedy, is that which is based on the principle that Might is Right.  That argument is: 1. If one has the strength to do X, then one has the right to do it; 2. Therefore, if one has the strength to act greedily, then one has the right to act greedily.  But, the problem with this argument, rarely detected in the centuries of its use, is that #1 is, upon further analysis, exposed as false.  For, a Right to do X is a sanction to do X, independent of doing it, whereas the strength to do X is no more than a physiological condition.  So, every argument over the centuries in which #1 serves as a premise is invalid, as is the one that is designed to deny the proposition that there is no Right to being greedy.

Right and Greed

As has been previously discussed, the U. N. Human Right to an adequate standard of living seems to belunfortunately misformulated, since a Right is a defense against interference, whereas the target of that one is neglect, i. e. an omission, not a commission.  However, with a slight modulation, the propriety and the power of the principle becomes clarified. For, it can be interpreted as "A human has a right to only an adequate standard of living", implying that one has no right to a possession that is inessential.  Now, while such a proposition seems to violate a fundamental freedom, it, in fact, is a principle of constraint against Greed, which, outside of some variations of Capitalism, is traditionally and widely recognized as a Vice, and, so, the principle is entailed in many Moral doctrines.  Furthermore, in a Zero-Sum society, to the Excess of one corresponds the Deficiency of another, so Greed is an interference in someone's well-being.  Hence, with a little fine-tuning, that proposition is, indeed, a Right, one which addresses a problem that, in some cases, is so pervasive and deeply entrenched, e. g. in the U. S., it is not even recognized as an ill.

Human Right and Responsibility

A Right is symbolic protection against interference in some activity, usually underwritten by a threat of legal retribution.  So, the U. N. Human Right to an adequate standard of living does not, in most cases, exemplify that scheme.  Now, it does when exploitation deprives someone of their just deserts.  However, the intention of its formulators is broader--to combat the negligence that, if not causes, reinforces and compounds Hgrotesque disparities in the possession of vital goods.  So, a more apt traditional Moral term than either Right or Duty, as an expression of that intention, is Responsibility--of others, for those living in substandard conditions.  That formulation goes beyond even Marxism in making  Species-Being a factor in human interaction.

Human Right and Perfect Duty

Corresponding to a Right is a Duty, i. e. if one possesses a Right, others have a Duty to honor it.  Now, in Kant's doctrine, non-interference in the well-being of another is a Perfect Duty, while promotion of the well-being of another is an Imperfect Duty.  Thus, accordingly, the Right to not be interfered with in the pursuit of well-being is Perfect, while the Right to the promotion of that well-being by another is Imperfect.  In contrast, at least one Human Right is elevated to the status of Perfect, in Kant's sense of the term--the Right to an adequate standard of living.  Thus, correspondingly, others have a Perfect Duty to promote that standard wherever it is lacking.

Right, Civil Right, Human Right

The Enlightenment concept of Right is that of protection against interference.  Hence, it is essentially an Individuating factor, typically advanced as a precondition for a social contract.  Now, most of the features of the 20th-century concept of Human Rights are, similarly, protective, with one notable novelty--the "right to an adequate standard of living", as is formulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which, as implicitly addressed to a society, and, hence, to its members, functions as a integrative factor it.  King implicitly recognizes the significance of this development in a 1967 speech, in which he calls for a move "from Civil Rights to Human Rights", on the grounds that the former, as a promotion of Individuality, is a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition of the Democracy that he envisages.  Likewise, that Right is another indication of the emergence of the concept of Species-Being as a determinant of social interaction.

Human Rights and Morality

The terms 'Rights of Man' and 'Human Rights' are, in themselves, synonymous, but their usages have been very different.  The former is most prominent in the context of the American and French Revolutions, signifying a transition from Monarchism to Democracy, and attributed primarily to individual members of an incipient nation.  The latter is prominent as a United Nations response to the Holocaust, asserting protection from varieties of brutality, e. g. genocide, slavery, torture, etc., and attributed primarily to individuals qua members of some extant ethnic group.  So, while the Rights of Man is a fundamentally Political principle, Human Rights is a more general Moral one, signifying a further concretization of the Universalist doctrines of the preceding centuries.