This is where you are wrong. They are more than just a set of ideals. They are also a set of binding international treaties.

Not all countries are signatories and, of course, it doesn’t matter if you say it’s binding, what matters is if it’s actually followed. Even the basics of the UN charter are constantly violated, as well as the human rights outlined in later declarations. The countries I talked about earlier that weaponize the concept for violence and their own gain never suffer any consequences from violating these agreements. This is because it’s power and leverage that dictate what actually happens. Power and leverage are tools.

No disagreement there, other than you should be careful not tot throw out the baby with the bathwater.

There’s no baby. The purpose of a thing is what it does. Not what we are told it does. What it actually does. It is a common mistake to believe that the purpose of a thing is to do what it has never done.

The concept of human rights has never done anything remotely like this, nor have the declarations of the UN. They are used, almost exclusively, as a weapon of nation states, usually from oppressor nations to justify their oppression of other nations via legalese. Every major human rights NGO has been part of this process, they help manufacture consent for the targeting of other countries and then sometimes put up an ignored complaint when the violence really starts to hit. Try to define the concept of human rights descriptively rather than prescriptively based on how it’s been used internationally and by its inconsistent application.

If we use the descriptive approach, then applying human rights to the global economy, a claim that is so vague as to be almost meaningless, we arrive back at the conclusion that it’s indistinguishable from how the status quo works. Rich, militarized, violent countries cynically wielding the concept for their own ends and only applying consequences for violating it to their targets. A set of nations more or less immune from the ICC and ICJ. International trade systems controlled by a few imperialist countries extracting from the global south. This is what your “tool” currently does re: the global economy, as international law. Ask yourself: what would actually change and why?

Similarly, considering it to be a tool implies it can be used to accomplish something. Let’s say a person comes up to you and they say they agree with the astoundingly ignorant academics in these articles. They want to create a new economy based on human rights. Then they ask you, “how do I help?”

What do you tell them, how does the approach differ from the status quo, and how will it ever be sufficient to overcome the fundamental economic and military forces aligned against you?