
Without morality, the market economy will destroy itself - petethomas
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/21/morality-capitalism-missing-link-marketplace
======
Theodores
We haven't actually given a genuine 'market economy' a chance to prove itself.
One critical aspect of this is taxation. We all know that the big
multinational companies can put their profits somewhere else, where they will
not get taxed. In most cases this is fully legal even if it is morally wrong.

There is also the matter of subsidy and when the government bails a company
out. Old business models get kept running when the invisible hand of the
market would have swept them to one side, maybe to allow new business models
to take hold.

Then there is outright corruption - backhanders to win government contracts.
This is not 'letting the market decide'.

Even worse there is the likes of Lockheed Martin able to own the government,
listen in through NSA on rival contractors bids and win favourable contracts
for themselves and the companies they do business with.

Then there is the small matter of law. Larger businesses can get away with
polluting the environment and running unfair business practices that mean
their rivals are not playing on a level playing field.

Also, there are costs to business that are not paid for by those businesses.
If the taxpayer is expected to pay for the road to an industrial estate on a
greenfield site just to get some lousy business to setup in that area then
again this is not 'market economy'.

Also there are those government services that are sold on the private
marketplace. For instance, the market in weather information, e.g. for
television news, should be a profitable one, however, if the government's
private arm of their weather service - e.g. the UK Met Office - competes in
that space then again things are not fair.

However you look at it we have not got a 'market economy', we have something
corrupt, with cronies and their backhanders rigging the marketplace. It is not
free and fair trade. We can forget about 'morality', let's just do things by
the book.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
Real capitalism has never worked "by the book". "The definition of insanity is
doing the same thing over and expecting a different result."

~~~
ekianjo
Have you read his comment ? Or you just wanted to make a blanket statement
devoid of sense?

~~~
eli_gottlieb
Of course I've read it. However, demanding that capitalism work according to
how Milton Friedman or anyone else described it is about as effective as
_demanding_ that it rain tomorrow, simply because it was forecasted to do so.
You're standing there shaking your fist because reality doesn't want to
conform to the stories you've told yourself.

Or the original poster could be trying to _impose his story on reality_ , in
which case I'd have to ask why he thinks that's such a great story in the
first place[1]!

[1] [http://jacobinmag.com/2013/09/dont-mention-the-
war/](http://jacobinmag.com/2013/09/dont-mention-the-war/)

~~~
obstacle1
The poster isn't painting capitalism with a broad brush, we're specifically
talking about a free market economy.

We've never seen how a free market economy actually works because we don't let
free market economies form without first destroying them via regulation.

We have models which persuasively suggest that a free market economy would be
the most efficient possible form of trade, or at least way _more_ efficient
than our overrregulated fustercluck.

So the poster seems to be saying "jeeze, why don't we try an actual free
market economy"!

Which seems eminently reasonable to me, and not at all "imposing his story on
reality".

~~~
eli_gottlieb
This is equivalent to saying that criticisms of the Soviet Union have nothing
to do with socialism because, "Workers controlling the means of production has
never been tried!"

Yes it has. If you are going to claim that your desired system has never
existed on the face of Earth, then your desired system is a utopian ideal that
most likely _cannot_ exist in the real world, or worse, would behave like a
standard revolutionary utopia by _destroying actually existing societies_ when
you attempt to create it.

Oh, wait, _that 's exactly how neoliberalism behaves._

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actually_existing_capitalism](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actually_existing_capitalism)

~~~
obstacle1
>This is equivalent to saying that criticisms of the Soviet Union have nothing
to do with socialism because, "Workers controlling the means of production has
never been tried!"

The word you want is _communism_ , not socialism. And the criticism is valid:
the USSR was far from a communist state. It was more like a mixed economy
leaning communist. Nobody is going to deny that there were elements of
socialism in the USSR, just as there are elements of socialism in the USA now.
Socialism != communism.

And I'll repeat: we're talking about a specific thing, _not_ all capitalism.
This thread is re: whether or not pure _free markets_ work, not whether or not
capitalism works. Hence your link misses the point; as, I suspect, do you.

------
flyinglizard
I always wonder why people bring up the 2008 crisis as an example of the
problems with Capitalism; in my view, it was just the self balancing
mechanisms inherent in the market economy kicking in. The fact the crisis
happened at all is a testament to the viability and adaptability of
Capitalism. State sponsored market deficiencies can go for much longer and
have worse implications.

I don't like the tone of that article at all. When you start demanding that
morality, for all its subjectivity and relativity, be involved with economics,
you invite troubles. The next step is for morality to be mandated through
regulations. Such regulations rarely do more than benefit specific players,
those who know how to bend the rules or those with higher up connections.

While I was expecting the author to call for such regulation, he surprisingly
didn't.

In my view, the correct way of fighting monopolies would be using the great
social tools at our disposal to make consumers more informed about the distant
implications of their buying decisions. This will create an informed
Capitalism, one where in the consumers are the ultimate regulators.

~~~
pdonis
_In my view, the correct way of fighting monopolies would be using the great
social tools at our disposal to make consumers more informed about the distant
implications of their buying decisions. This will create an informed
Capitalism, one where in the consumers are the ultimate regulators._

Can't upvote this enough.

~~~
nooneelse
Great idea/ideal, and I share it... but until I'm wearing a HUD that can tell
me what materials and processes in which factories and ports were used at each
step of production and distribution contributing to each lot of cereal in the
store, I'm not really informed enough at the point of economic decision to
accurately reflect my utility function through my purchases. And good luck
getting the producers of goods to share details even approaching that. As a
class, they routinely fight additional labeling of their products, getting
access to their production and distribution databases will be a far worse
fight.

------
elgabogringo
Without morality, people will destroy themselves regardless of their socio-
political-economic system.

------
lazyjones
I didn't find a single argument in favor of the claim in the title, i.e. that
the market economy will somehow destroy itself without morality. It's just a
firm belief the author has, or perhaps a hope ...

~~~
calibraxis
Yes, there's zillions of better articles. But why would a serious argument
against markets be voted up here? (Any serious market abolitionist would
explain pervasive externalities, enormous inefficiency of markets, rewarding
participants for acting sociopathically and punishing others, etc.) But this
is a place where people discuss hawking things called "minimum viable
products" and so on.

------
RougeFemme
I used to believe that at least the _consumer_ market economy would start to
correct itself once we reached the point where there were no longer enough
gainfully employed people to buy the goods and services being offered. And
that would push corporations to start to re-hire the unemployed and not slash
to the bone in pursuit of astronomical quarterly gains.

But that was a very myopic, "developed" nation view. I hadn't considered the
use of cheap global labor and the rise of the middle and upper classes in
developing nations that would provide the necessary demand for goods and
services, making the "workers" in developed nations mere surplus to be
discarded/ignored. (I'm watching "A Christmas Carol" right now.)

------
ams6110
Reminds me of "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious
people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." (John Adams)

------
Tycho
"Friedrich Hayek once said that to complain about the workings of the market
was like complaining about the weather. But at least the Met Office never
colonised our souls."

Seems to be a lot of expressions like that in left wing journalism. "Colonised
our souls." Like all of a sudden you're reading a Yeats poem.

~~~
Brakenshire
In my experience you almost never see phrases like that being used, certainly
not in news sections. In any case, this article is an opinion piece, on
Comment Is Free, which is a free-for-all, and it's not written by a
journalist, but by an aide to the Archbishop of Canterbury.

For those who don't know, the Archbishop of Canterbury is the leader of the
Church of England, and the current incumbent, Justin Welby, used to a finance
executive in the oil industry, and tends to be engaged with these sorts of
issues.

------
josu
This is a bit off topic, but I hate it when they use pictures of malls to
illustrate capitalism. I consider myself a capitalist and I despise malls,
they represent mindless consumerism. They might be somewhat related to
capitalism, but they will never be a paradigmatic example.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
Capitalism _needs_ consumerism to deal with its overproduction crises. The
imagined "sober Protestant bourgeois ethic" of capitalism stopped having any
basis in reality hundreds of years ago, around the time usury and Enclosure
Laws, and Poor Laws were used to evict the peasantry from their land to
forcibly create a landless proletariat.

~~~
pdonis
_Capitalism needs consumerism to deal with its overproduction crises._

This only illustrates the fact that "capitalism" and "free markets" are not
synonymous. In a free market, producers who overproduce go out of business.

~~~
javajosh
Actually, in a free market overproducers try like hell to increase demand.
They do that through better advertising, which these days means directed
advertising. Mass media (starting with newspapers) has really changed the way
the world works because it gives producers a way to affect the very fabric of
society. Advertisements, TV commercials, billboards - we just accept these as
part of the landscape. We accept the constant intrusion of private enterprise
to influence our thought, which is strange indeed.

Mark Twain wrote a remarkable little book called "A Connecticut Yankee in King
Arthur's Court", which to me is the quintessentially American book on
capitalism as it is fetishized by Ayn Rand etc. The man travels back in time,
and proceeds to use his technical knowledge to enrich himself, and civilize
the medieval society. One of the steps he takes is to introduce advertising to
the knights shields. This is presented un-ironically.

Of course Twain grew up in a very different time where the ratio of city to
country was far different, and cities themselves were much humbler affairs. It
was easy (and indeed the default) to be "in nature". So the product of
"American ingenuity" no matter how crass represented lovely "civilization",
and one could turn away from it if one didn't like it, and venture back into
the forest. But now, with our mega-cities there are few forests left, and they
are far away, and if we turn away from one advertisement we are just
confronted with another and another and then another.

~~~
pdonis
_Actually, in a free market overproducers try like hell to increase demand._

They can _try_ , yes; but if they don't succeed, they go out of business. In
systems that are referred to by the term "capitalism", OTOH, they can often
get the government to _force_ increases in demand--for example, railroad
owners in the late 1800's who had failed in open competition went to the
government to get laws passed that gave them exclusive rights to certain
routes.

Also, a free market means that if people choose to buy something, then that
something gets made, whether or not it's something that you think "ought" to
be made.

 _with our mega-cities there are few forests left_

Do you have any actual numbers to back up this claim? AFAIK there is still a
_lot_ of land occupied by forests and other "natural" environments. I live
near a major city but there is plenty of forest an hour's drive away. Maybe
you need to get out more?

 _if we turn away from one advertisement we are just confronted with another
and another and then another_

I think that depends on how you choose to spend your time. Yes, if you spend a
lot of time watching TV you can't avoid seeing a lot of ads. I solve that
problem by not watching much TV. Similar remarks apply to other kinds of
advertising.

Btw, I'm not trying to say I'm in favor of advertising; I'm not. I think most
of it is a great waste of effort. But ads aren't aimed at someone like me
anyway; they're aimed at people who are actually influenced by them. So if you
really want to get rid of ads, you need to find a way to convince people that
they shouldn't be influenced by them. Which, btw, is what a true free market
requires anyway: it means the responsibility for making sure that your buying
decisions reflect your actual values lies with you.

------
kingkawn
The many legions of people more thoughtful than us all throughout the
millennia who have moralized against greed might've made a dent by now if
moralizing were the answer.

~~~
mpweiher
"It's not about morality _versus_ markets" (my emphasis)

Markets are a great optimization mechanism. It is up to societies to decide
what they should optimize.

~~~
kingkawn
This is a wonderful way to say it.

My further extrapolation is to turn the full might of the market to advertise
and sell poverty relief without treating it like charity but instead treating
it like a product. None of the moralizing, just focus on what the purchaser
will get out of the exchange, like any other product.

------
kenster07
Without morality, ANY social system, not just a market economy, will have
problems, since many moral constructs directly lead to social stability. Some
basic examples:

1) Thou shalt not steal, cheat, murder, etc... 2) Notions of karma -- i.e.
everything you do unto others will come back to you.

------
resdirector
From the headline I thought this was a stunning result from academia. Then in
the first two paragraphs I read the words "Pope", "Rush Limbaugh",
"Archbishop", "Jesus", "Marxist", etc.

------
gametheoretic
There are no moral phenomena, only moral interpretations.

------
EarthLaunch
This is true in the sense that a market economy, i.e. capitalism, is based on
morality. Few people are aware of the moral justification for capitalism.
Morality trumps politics. Without a moral justification, the market economy
won't survive.

> "No social system (and no human institution or activity of any kind) can
> survive without a moral base. On the basis of the altruist morality,
> capitalism had to be—and was—damned from the start." -Ayn Rand, Capitalism:
> The Unknown Ideal, 30

~~~
PavlovsCat
When was capitalism ever based on altruism? Isn't the idea rather that
everybody being as selfish as possible magically leads to good results?

~~~
lumberjack
The idea you are referring to is about self interest not selfishness.

~~~
PavlovsCat
I know that the idea is enlightened self-interest.

Is it in the enlightened self-interest of a person that after they died, there
is still life in the Universe? Is it in my enlightened self-interest that
those who starve and have no water have a better life?

What, exactly, is the difference between self-interest and selfishness? Is one
not just a euphemism for the other?

------
michaelcampbell
The latest podcast of Freakonomics discussed this; believe it or don't, but it
was quite thought provoking nonetheless.

------
iterative
"Many have argued that capitalism does not offer a satisfactory moral message.
But that is like saying that calculus does not contain cabrohydrates, amino
acids, or other essential nutrients. Everything fails by irrevelant
standards."

\-- Thomas Sowell

~~~
Ygg2
Wait does that mean slavery is morally neutral?

Because capitalism predates feudalism as the economic model and slavery
predates feudalism.

------
mortyseinfeld
For some reason, I thought of Rahm Emanual (used to be Obama's chief of staff)
when he said "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste"
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yeA_kHHLow](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yeA_kHHLow)

Unfortunately, you have leftist statists that want market economies to fail so
they can impose their statist, opressive regimes on people under the guise of
"helping the people"

~~~
unclebucknasty
> _Unfortunately, you have leftist statists that want market economies to fail
> so they can impose their statist, opressive regimes on people under the
> guise of "helping the people"_

You really believe this is the case with people like Emanuel and the Obama
admin in general? Because, I wonder: what do you think their endgame is? What
is their _true_ motivation for wanting to establish a statist, oppresive
regime?

It seems to me that we currently have a corporatist regime. If I am to choose
between rule by corporations (where the motive is profit) and rule by the
state (where I presumably have a voice), I'd choose the latter.

Problem is, however, we currently have the worst of both worlds: rule by a
corporatist state.

~~~
mortyseinfeld
The bottom line (a big one) is that corporations don't have guns and can take
you away.

------
xname
Author: "Malcolm Brown is director of mission and public affairs for the
Church of England".

------
pablovidal85
All social problems will be eventually solved through technology, not
morality.

~~~
wsinks
Morality was one of the first technologies.

~~~
thenerdfiles
Is this Nietzschean or something? What is it saying?

~~~
ams6110
At some point in our past we transitioned from being an amoral animal to a
self-aware species with notions of morality. Certain things/behaviors are
right and others are wrong. That clearly had a survival advantage.

~~~
thenerdfiles
Moral facts are not self-evident. We became aware of disagreement, but about
the games we use to describe right and wrong. It's what comes after the
"because".

Saying "X is wrong" and "Y knows X is wrong" mean two very different things
depending on your analysis. "Notions of morality" is about the first statement
_and_ about the second. Does Y know X is wrong in virtue of the moral fact
that X is wrong? If grass is green, there's something I'm learning when I read
"Grass is green" — or is it upon seeing grass that I know grass is green?

The point here is the features of facts: one does not see the wrongness of an
act in the way that one sees grass is green, irrespective to the question of
language. Now, of course, morality is primarily codified into symbols — do
facts exist here, behind the veil of language? Perhaps. But the main question
here is the structure of a fact: Is it a picture? If I know the constant of
gravity, I know something about the shape of galaxies through relativity. I
can see regularity across the heavens. I can test it and measure its
components, but only in virtue of axiomitization, which is linguistic. Well,
how does one test morality? Does one collect report on opinion, or does one
look into the world to discover their structure? Certainly reports on moral
opinion will be picture-like, but do they disclose the structure we would find
if morality could be discovered in the world without reports on it? Is direct
evidence possible without the existence of indirect evidence?

