Abstract
Most scholars accept that people are materially better off in market societies, and that people are materially worse off in nonmarket societies. However, there is a debate among the critics, defenders, and students of commercial life concerning whether or not the wealth that societies gain by embracing markets comes at a high moral cost. This chapter argues that it is important to answer the question of whether or not engaging in market activities is morally corrupting. As such, we ask and answer the question: Do markets corrupt our morals? Are markets moral spaces that depend on and cultivate our morality or are markets immoral spaces where vice thrives and is encouraged? Is virtue endogenous to markets?
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Notes
- 1.
Notice that this echoes Aquinas’ concern about a “just price.”
- 2.
It might be argued that the more important worry relates to the quality of life of the poorest in these countries, that the gap between the rich and the poor in a particular country is an irrelevant consideration, and that mobility rather than inequality should be the principal consideration. Additionally, as we discuss in Chap. 4, economic inequality is more of an issue in nonmarket societies. Still, it would be wrong to dismiss economic inequality as a legitimate concern or to say that economic inequality is not a phenomenon that we observe in market societies.
- 3.
See Appendix for the list of market and nonmarket societies.
- 4.
This, of course, will not be fully satisfying to anyone who worries that markets are morally corrupting. A critic of markets concerned about the potential of moral corruption as a result of market activity could always complain (a) that they are not committed to the view that nonmarket societies are less morally corrupting than market societies, or (b) that our approach does not account for all of the complexity involved in linking market activity to moral outcomes. However, the arguments and evidence that we offer are reasons to be skeptical of the claim that markets are morally corrupting. At the very least, we advance a response to the question, “Do markets corrupt our morals?,” that directly engages that question. If we inspire others to look for more compelling ways to assess whether or not market activity is morally corrupting, we would have surpassed our ambition.
- 5.
Munger and Russell (2018) asked a similar question about profit seekers.
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Storr, V.H., Choi, G.S. (2019). Can Markets Be Moral?. In: Do Markets Corrupt Our Morals?. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18416-2_1
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