Reprinted from AT WORK, Vol. Yes, says the author, and as a result, the ability of individuals to live freely, fully, and well is being slowly eroded. Here he offers six ideas for restoring human rights and dignity.
Human rights secure our freedom to live fully and responsibly within life's community.
We are finding, however, that as corporations have become increasingly successful in claiming these same rights for themselves, they have become increasingly assertive in denying them to individuals. The conflict between the person's right to a means of living and the presumed right of the corporation to the security of its property and profit is perhaps the ultimate confrontation between the natural rights of living, breathing people and the rights that the institutions of capitalism have presumed for themselves, but it is only one of many. They have in turn used the rights so acquired to extend their control over the institutions of democracy and the material, communications, and knowledge resources on which people depend to secure their living. Now, the institutions of money are well on their way to declaring themselves owners of the whole of life through the systematic effort to expand the private patenting of genetic materials. There seems to be an ironclad relationship.