Is the Free Market Moral?

Injustice is profitable...Thrasymachus, Plato's "Republic".

[I didn't notice but there is a contemporaneous thread that may intersect with your OP]

Reply to ZzzoneiroCosm I think market forces are both marvellous things and thoroughly immoral, but I don't understand your argument to this end at all.

Maybe 'desire' is a good place to start. In a market certain decisions are taken based on price. For the buyer, this is some sort of preference, within existing conditions. How does that relate to desire? How can I express my desire for universal love and peace, for instance? Or my acute desire for trinkets I sadly can't afford?

Reply to ZzzoneiroCosm

Another conclusion also seems eminent from your argument:


1. The parameters of a free market are informed by market forces
2. Market forces are precisely human (economic) desires
3.b. Some human (economic) desires are moral
4.b. Some market forces are moral
5.b. The parameters of a free market are informed by a moral element

This might not be relevant to your interest, but it seems fair enough to point out.

Cheers!

Edit: Reminds me of democracy... Is the Vox Populi actually just laissez faire in disguise!?! :-O

BUY! BUY! BUY!

Fair trade, not free trade. Nos vies pas leurs profits. Our lives, not your profits. (Votez Philippe Poutou NPA New Anticapitalist Party - France). ?( ?_?)?

Maybe the discussion should start off with the fact that there is no such thing as the "free market"? And I'm not even talking about the Left critique of economics & capitalist society (of which I'm a part of) but mainstream economic theory. Even many of the followers of the Chicago School of Economics are not genuine free marketeers, because they learn Macroeconomic theory in Graduate School that, there are many elements of the economy that are, and have to be, inevitably and deeply regulated.

The more free a market is the more it tends towards corruption and all sorts of harmful inequalities.

Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm

I wonder if someone can help me locate this argument in the history of economic-ethical thought:

1. The parameters of a free market are informed by market forces
2. Market forces are precisely human (economic) desires
3. Some human (economic) desires are immoral
4. Some market forces are immoral
5. The parameters of a free market are informed by an immoral element


Thanks!

First and foremost, a free market needs legal and political rules to function as otherwise the premises for a free market to function don't exist (and the likely outcome is an oligopoly or monopoly market). If you don't have a functioning legal system you likely simply won't have a free market system.

Naturally communists and the some think that monopolistic competition is an integral part of "free market" system, but that's not the case how mainstream economics sees it.

The way I've always understood it is that it's the denial of economic liberty(the freedom to contract, to produce and to trade, and the right to property) that's considered immoral. Other than maybe some extreme market fundamentalists, I don't think there's very many economists or philosophers who hold that all economic actors are always entirely ethical and virtuous in their dealings or that market outcomes are inherently just and fair. According to market fundamentalists the only legitimate intervention in markets is the prosecution of coercion, fraud, and theft, everything else should be left for the market to sort out. For me that seems a bit too permissive because there are plenty of more subtle and sophisticated ways of cheating and exploiting people that are just as harmful as coercion and outright theft.

In my view denying people a reasonable degree of economic liberty is deeply immoral as it's a violation of fundamental human rights, but allowing unfettered capitalism to be the driving force in our world and the ultimate power over our lives would be no less so.

Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm

Some human (economic) desires are immoral

The free market usually expunges such forces, because, as might be expected, immoral behavior is bad for business. It doesn't do so perfectly, but it's the best method of raising billions out of poverty yet devised, such that one can safely ignore the empty sloganeering about "harmful inequalities" and the like.

Quoting Thorongil

The free market usually expunges such forces, because, as might be expected, immoral behavior is bad for business.

Before we began regulating bad behavior the robber barons made killing off immoral behavior, so the market definitely does not naturally expunge such forces.

it's the best method of raising billions out of poverty yet devised, such that one can safely ignore the empty sloganeering about "harmful inequalities" and the like.

Mixed economies do a much better job of that, in fact unregulated markets tend to produce extreme inequalities and severe negative externalities.

There are justifications under natural rights to prevent market monopolization

Reply to ernestm Anything from monarchy to anarchy can be justified under natural rights. Aristotle argued for natural slavery. Concepts like natural rights and objective morality are rhetorically useful insofar as they can move the crowd, but really there's no telling if those sorts of things are actually real so they're pretty much irrelevant to public discourse. It's much easier to just state our values subjectively and negotiate from there.

Quoting Sivad

Before we began regulating bad behavior the robber barons made killing off immoral behavior, so the market definitely does not naturally expunge such forces.

It's interesting that you fail to quote the clause "it doesn't do so perfectly" I made....

Quoting Sivad

Mixed economies do a much better job of that, in fact unregulated markets tend to produce extreme inequalities and severe negative externalities.

Most people who are generally in favor of free markets are not opposed to some degree of planning and regulations.

It is funny, but the truth is an ACTUAL free market economy could be a good thing IF the powers that be would really let it exist (and in some ways no matter what it does to a limited extent, but I'll remark about that later).

No matter who is in charge, it is a GIVEN they will do WHATEVER it takes to allow the effects of the market/economy/etc to increase their wealth and power while at the same time restrict/limit it if it threatens them. The easiest way to look at it is that a FREE market is only FREE as long as the people that own it DON'T have a need to manipulate it to their own advantage. Another way to look at it, if you have a frontier economy without anyone being able to control it is more or less 'free', but likely limited in what is available. And when you live in developed/'civilized' countries what you can buy and sell is (as well as how you do it) is determined by what is in the best interest of people that have money and or power choose it to be.

For example, in some countries certain items might be common enough for them to be traded inexpensively by locals, however traders that sell them elsewhere may limit the number of these items to foreigners who might get the idea of buying a lot of them and selling them elsewhere. I believe such activity is called 'gray markets' and an example of this is buying 'international' versions of a college text book instead of paying the full price of it in the United States. Also pharmaceuticals in socialized counties are often cheaper that their US counter parts as well because such countries REFUSE to pay for development research costs yet demand to have access to the same drugs as we have here.

Anyways if you remove ALL restricts you are left with what is know as the BLACK MARKET. In reality the black market is actually the only really free market there is, however since the black market includes human trafficking and things like murder for hire obviously the concept of being 'FREE' in a free market has some contradictions. If anyone reading has heard of Silk Roads they can understand some of the benefits and dangers of such things.

The irony I think is that MANY people think they are happy with 'FREE' markets until they are afraid of how many OTHER people will indulge in their vices/crimes/etc. when there is nobody to stop them. Of course, they usually don't worry about the same thing about themselves (although if they do they are likely little wiser than some other that haven't experienced such things)

To me I like to think of it sort of like having a cop/ arbitrator/sheriff available when things go wrong between people. While in some places there are enough people that will step in to take care of a problem when such a person isn't there (in which case they are the 'virtual' arbitrator for whatever reason), if such a person isn't there then the matter has to be solved by whatever means by the people who are there; which can be uglier than if an arbitrator is there to resolve it.

Of course that doesn't mean that the acting arbitrator is 'fair' or not just a strong man themselves, but is just silly to think that EVERYONE will always play nicely in any market and any group of perhaps twenty people or more won't have their own problems where someone will have to act as an arbitrator from time to time.

IMHO, people that think that a 'free' market (instead of a black market) can exist without arbitrators are either just trying to FOOL themselves for whatever reasons OR they themselves act as the ARBITRATOR of whatever they run but they don't want anyone interfering with what they do. In either case it is a DO AS I SAY NOT AS I DO situation since they obviously what some protections from a completely unregulated market (such as not having to worry about having too many contaminated substances in the food they eat), yet they don't want to be bothered by anyone telling them what to do.

For me it is just a given that there will almost always be arbitrators/cops of one sort or another in many of the places I go whether I like it or not. Perhaps if I had something that I didn't like people messing with it I might think like the people who like to dream what it would be like if they didn't exist or at least the one's that bother them didn't exist.

Quoting dclements

It is funny, but the truth is an ACTUAL free market economy could be a good thing IF the powers that be would really let it exist

I think you’ve hit the nail on the head: economy is always subject to politics. Otherwise stated on one of many, more concrete planes: shares of cash between beings is always subject to the will-driven self-interests of the beings involved and how these self-interests interact. Yes, money can buy our Politicians (with a big ‘P’, as they say in anthropology classes), but this money is itself the product of some other beings’ will, hence some other beings’ politics (with a small ‘p’).

Restated: If money/capital is various forms of sustenance, it holds no value beyond its sustaining of beings, thereby making economy dependent on the interaction of self-interests, aka politics. (as is already generally known)

Because of this, I find that there must first be a non-tongue-in-cheek checks of will/power that is so structure so as to produce a balance of will/power between different—and potentially competing—wills. Nothing new in this. Its rumored that the USA once upheld some such sort of concept. But nowadays it’s become horse manure. One easy, but acknowledgedly turbulent, example: good-ol’ guns rights. Why was it placed in the constitution to begin with? To ensure that the populace could overthrow its elected government via mutiny if the government should ever become sufficiently corrupt. That whole non-tongue-in-cheek “checks and balances of power” thing. Nowadays, one’s abilities to soot bambi at will, or a drive-by driver that pisses you off (one of many activities frivolous gun ownership within metropolitan areas can result in)—even if the weapon is fully automatic—fairs no chance against the arsenal currently available to the State alone. It wasn’t the same thing when everybody—the army included—was limited to muskets and bayonets (and a few cannons, etc.). The currently proliferating militia forces in the USA are, imo, out of touch with the capacities of the present government (not that I condone militias). A touchy topic, I know. But it’s not the only topic in regards to what checks and balances of power in a government of the people, by the people, for the people was ‘once upon a time’ envisioned to be. Or at least so I suppose.

Taking politics into account, then, there can be no free market (in a non-Orwellian sense) devoid of an honest checks and balances of power. And since economy is now globally organized, this checks and balances of power would itself need to be somehow global (laugh at this; I’ll understand) before a free market can ever manifest locally. Such as one where regular folks—including some who live in poverty—do not provide welfare to corporations that should have been selected out of being due to their behaviors … but instead, due to this welfare, have now become even more too-large-to-fail than ever before.

Well, that is one relatively ignorant person's meager thoughts on the subject. I don’t pretend to be all that knowledgeable about the specifics of economics (especially those founded on the premise of infinite growth) and current political affairs … other than what I gather from here and there.