General Prosperity: Is Wellbeing a Human Right?

    • Belgrade 2017
    • Presentation speakers
      • Gerhard Eichweber, Silva Plan / Value Group, Switzerland

    Abstract:

    Is Wellbeing a Human Right? If so: what do politicians, economists and other social scientists so far miss and, thus, need to learn, in order to be able to successfully work for that right? What do citizens have to learn, in order to claim, achieve and secure that common right for themselves and their countries? Political leaders and their parties as well as public institutions world-wide claim to strive for the wellbeing, not only of their electorates, but for their entire peoples, countries or respective target groups – and they claim to know, how to achieve and secure this. Results as perceived and often outright suffered by large majorities in most countries worldwide – and their different political systems – indicate and prove, that leaders, as well as the scientists assisting these, do instead either lack the knowledge and ability to achieve lasting prosperity and wellbeing – or do instead aim at different objectives and results than the ones they state to stand for. In democracies, supposedly, the citizens and tax-payers, not their servants in political and other public offices, are the “boss” and have to elect, pay and dismiss persons, in order for these to do for the community what otherwise everybody and every group individually constantly would have to dedicate time and energy to. Thus, from building and wiping the roads via water supply and public schools to foreign policies, common interests and the achievement of related objectives, together with the related powers, are temporarily delegated to individuals, in order to be optimally turned from potentials into lasting realities. Yet, do those in charge (or those waiting to be elected in order to do it better) possess the competence required to merit to be awarded the respective competences? The paper confronts the above mentioned questions with observations of realities of past and present and proposes to extrapolate current facts, trends and developments – as well as the paradigms these are based upon – into the near and far future. In doing so, the paper relates the practice and results as well as the paradigms implicitly and explicitly quoted with the author’s findings on economy and its being related to culture and to, moreover, the role of qualitative diversity of people, preferences and offers, as published before. By explaining the dealing with diversity as the key deciding over crisis or general prosperity, the paper hints on solutions proven in practice as well as upon potentials to improve these further.