Come on, take a stand.

Without heading away for heavy reading, I'll take a swing. The free market is identical with individual advantage-seeking in all areas, whether economic, political, or matrimonial. Morals are what societies have found to serve well as a moderator for that impulse.

If morals are held to be important, the individual actions will have to meet the standard. If not, then of course many (not all) individuals will take full advantage. The free market does not inherently corrode morals, it is lack of moral enforcement that invites personal corruption.

Asking the free market to be a moral force is oxymoronic. Asking it to remain moral absent active moral enforcement is foolish.

Markets occur if they are not actively suppressed, and even when they are. They don't need to be helped that way. They need damping mechanisms, for steady operation. Runaways are fun, like nuclear explosions, but less-efficient but manageable reaction rates are more useful. Markets need active pressure to spread accurate information, and suppress false info. Businesses never want to explain what they are doing.

But all moral systems require honesty as a starting point, so the market is amoral there, too.

Markets, like Monopoly games, trend toward concentration of wealth. I know of no examples of society or government having to make this possible. But societies do have to enforce some wealth-sharing, to not waste the resource of otherwise healthy members in temporary distress. All social animals do this. So markets are amoral that way, also.

But preventing markets is really hard, just like preventing humans from competing is hopeless (thus Communism fails without some form of it). So we have an activity that will exist, but must be managed. That human competition has given us telephones as well as symphonies is good reason to respect it, as well as admit it is deeply ingrained in all life.

I would have to ask, "Can moral character exist in a free market to begin with?"

I asked a friend of mine, an MBA, if one could be a successful businessman and be compassionate at the same time. Without a moments hesitation he
said no.

But as to the question, I think that the free market attracts mainly those of low or non existent moral character and rewards them as such. Those with a high moral character generally do not fair well in a free market system.

I believe this also works for politics as well.

C

I've been reading through these, they assembled an interesting group. John Gray is one of my favorite philosophers these days, though I don't quite agree with his dismissal of humanism as a way of looking at life.

As to my own quick take on the question: free markets encourage people to act in their own self interests, both short term and long term. What we as a society deem as moral decisions are often choices that one would make against one's own interests, in favor of another's interests. Is it better to give your old clothes to the Salvation Army in order to clothe others, or to sell your own clothes to a consignment shop? Maybe that's a silly example but I think it illustrates that, at times, free markets will ask people to put their own interests before the interests of others and that is potentially morally corrosive.

A Free Market denies the less influential not only a seat at the economic table but meaningful participation in their own governance.

Compromise involving all the parties affected is the touch stone I have come to look for as a sign of good Governance.

Laws and regulations that are recognized and enforced by Government make the environment for the less influential Citizens to be considered consequential in the outcome of politics and their own economic future.

I took the present experience of living in a City where there is absolutely no recognition of law and Parliamentary Process to understand the beauty of compromise!

The essays presume that moral character exists. The proof that moral character doesn't exist is the active pursuit of the "free market."

How can the "free market" possibly exist within a moral framework? That truly bends the mind, and none of the authors confront that, although Robert Reich comes closest.

Of course it does. Some people cannot and will not respect boundaries, especially other peoples' bondaries.

Thanks for the reference. I've forwarded it to a couple of people with whom I've carried on a conversation on this subject for years.

Ever since reading Tawney's Religion and the Rise of Capitalism I've tended to believe that the Free Market does corrode moral character. And so does its absence.

For some reason I'm reminded of the Beyond the Fringe skit on the End of Days

"Is the veil of the Temple, split?"

"Well the veil of the Temple is always rather dodgy"