Abstract
It is a common enough view that market agents are self-interested, not benevolent or altruistic – call this market egoism – and that this is morally defensible, even morally required. There are two styles of defence – utilitarian and deontological – and while they differ, they confront a common problem. This is the availability problem. The problem is that the more successful the moral justification of self-interested economic activity, the less there is for the justification to draw upon. Religious justifications of market egoism at least make a stab at dealing with the problem; secular accounts typically do not.
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I thank Annette Kilarr.
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Lynch, T. Legitimating Market Egoism: The Availability Problem. J Bus Ethics 84, 89–95 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-008-9675-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-008-9675-6