Debt

Abstract: National debt is often framed as an economic necessity—a tool for growth, stability, and strategic investment. Yet history reveals that debt has also been a recurring instrument of decline, eroding empires, undermining sovereignty, and transferring the cost of ambition onto future generations. This essay argues that public debt must be understood not only in fiscal terms but as a profound human rights issue. When states borrow beyond their means, they bind people who do not yet exist to obligations they never consented to—effectively transforming unborn generations into economic subjects without voice or agency. Drawing on historical examples and contemporary data from the world’s most indebted nations, the essay traces how unsustainable borrowing constrains development, deepens inequality, and compromises the capacity of future societies to uphold basic human dignity. It calls for a reimagining of fiscal responsibility as moral responsibility: a recognition that debt, when misused, is not just a financial burden but a form of intergenerational injustice—a silent exploitation of the future by the present. Throughout history, national debt has been both a tool of power and a moral test. Empires and states have borrowed to build roads, wage wars, and fund revolutions—but also to delay responsibility, to push the burden of today’s ambitions onto tomorrow’s citizens. When governments treat debt as an instrument of control or a source of artificial prosperity, they are not merely taking on financial obligations. They are borrowing against time, against the lives and possibilities of people not yet born. In that sense, debt […]