Economic Rights

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss economic rights. Is democracy the truest conduit of capitalism, or do the forces that make us rich run counter to the democratic institutions that safeguard our rights? The economist Milton Friedman once said, “If freedom weren’t so economically efficient it wouldn’t stand a chance”. If that was ever true, is it still the case as we enter the era of the globalised economy? What is the relationship between democracy and capitalism? Is it possible for a country to get rich and stay rich without a liberal constitution and what is the prospect of the ever looming spectre of ‘globalised capital’ infringing human rights?With Professor Amartya Sen, Master of Trinity College, Cambridge and winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Economic Science; Will Hutton, former Editor of The Observer, Director of The Industrial Society and author of The State We’re In.

→ Play on BBC Sounds website

Guests

• Professor Amartya Sen No other episodes
  Master of Trinity College, Cambridge
• Will Hutton No other episodes
  Former Editor of The Observer, Director of The Industrial Society

Related episodes

• Capitalism
  
  24 Jun, 1999 330 Economics
• The American Century
  
  17 Dec, 1998 320 Political science
• Work in the 20th Century
  
  26 Nov, 1998 330 Economics
• Money
  
  1 Mar, 2001 330 Economics
• Democracy
  
  18 Oct, 2001 320 Political science
• Cultural Rights in the 20th Century
  
  10 Dec, 1998 320 Political science
• Mercantilism
  
  16 Mar, 2023 330 Economics
• David Ricardo
  
  25 Mar, 2021 330 Economics
• Aristotle’s Politics
  
  6 Nov, 2008 320 Political science
• The Wealth of Nations
  
  19 Feb, 2015 330 Economics

---

Programme ID: p00546m7

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00546m7

Auto-category: 330 (Economics)

Hello (First sentence from this episode)

Hello. Is democracy the truest conduit of capitalism or do the forces that make us rich run counter in the end to the democratic institutions that safeguard our rights?