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Index and Glossary
There is an index to the topics dealt with in the economics articles here, and a glossary of economic terms here.
See also the index to the politics articles .
The term human rights is used to refer to one of two mutually exclusive mental constructs:
- an ethical construct denoting entitlements that are deemed to be rightfully inherent in the existence of every human being, and whose rightful existence is deemed to be independent of other considerations; or,
- a social construct denoting entitlements that are to be conferred upon individuals by the community and which are to be subject to socially-determined limitations that include those arising from conflicts of interest with other individuals.
The best-known example of its use as an ethical construct is in the American Declaration of Independence which took it to be "self-evident" that everyone had "certain inalienable rights". Its use in that sense cannot be put into practical operation because it is definitionally precluded from meeting the operational need to resolve conflicts of human rights. (The need to resolve such conflicts would normally require the entitlement to be conditional upon factors that are no longer inherent in a person's existence, as a result of which the rights would cease to be absolute or "inalienable".)