Moral Foundations and Economic Development: Chapter 1
An Introduction to Ethics and Markets
This has not only been the normal attitude of all ethical
teachings, but, what is more important, also that expressed
in the practical action of the average man of pre-capitalistic
times, pre-capitalistic in the sense that the rational utilization
of capital in a permanent enterprise and the rational
capitalistic organization of labor had not yet become
dominant forces in the determination of economic activity.
Now just this attitude was one of the strongest inner
obstacles which the adaptation of men to the conditions of
an ordered bourgeois-capitalistic economy has encountered
everywhere. The most important opponent with which the
spirit of capitalism, in the sense of a definite standard of life
claiming ethical sanction, has had to struggle, was that type
of attitude and reaction to new situations which we may
designate as traditionalism. [Weber, Max (1905 /
2012-10-21). The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
(Kindle Locations 273-279). Vook, Inc.. Kindle Edition.]
This exchange society and the guidance of the coordination
of a far-ranging division of labor by variable market prices
was made possible by the spreading of certain gradually
evolved moral beliefs which, after they had spread, most
men in the Western world learned to accept. These rules
were inevitably learned by all the members of a population
consisting chiefly of independent farmers, artisans and
merchants and their servants and apprentices who shared
the daily experiences of their masters.
They held an ethos that esteemed the prudent man, the
good husbandman and provider who looked after the future
of his family and his business by building up capital, guided
less by the desire to be able to consume much than by the
wish to be regarded as successful by his fellows who
pursued similar aims. [Hayek, F. A. (1979/2011-03-21). Law,
Legislation and Liberty, Volume 3: The Political Order of a Free
People (Law, Legislation, and Liberty) (pp. 164-165).
University of Chicago Press. Kindle Edition.]
I.
On the Extent of Markets, A Possible Ethical Explanation.
To a casual reader of economic history, it should be obvious that
there is no single “market.” Markets change through time and vary from
region to region at every given time. The simplest markets are local ones,
with just a few services traded, as with barter among family members,
friends, and fellow tribe members for services and other favors. Early
markets used money and traded homemade goods indirectly for others
made nearby, often in the same village or river valley. A subset of these
markets, but not all, were linked with others and thus inter-regional and
international trading networks emerged. A subset of persons, although not
all, have consumed products from all over the world for several thousand
years. Goods from China are, for example, found in the tombs of Egyptian
kings.
Economic historians note that the extent of long distance trade has
varied through time, and also has varied among peoples and regions.
Nonetheless, until the nineteenth century, most people in most parts of the
world produced the necessities of life for themselves.
Nonetheless, until very recently, most persons in most places were
farmers or worked on farms, as they had for thousands of years. Most
commercial organizations were little larger than families and served little
more than their villages. Only a small fraction of humanity lived in the
commercial society that characterizes “normal” life for the great majority
of humanity today. The commercial society that we take for granted today,
was not the normal pattern of life for most until fairly recently, and is still
not the norm everywhere.
Technology is part of the explanation for the emergence of the
commercial society. As transport costs fell, it became easier to ship items
from one place to another. Thus, trade has normally been more extensive
near bodies of water than inland. However, the extent of trade also varies
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along a shoreline. Other organizational technologies helped increase the
size of “teams” that could be used to produce and distributed goods and
services. New rules and monitoring methods were developed, as with
invoices, double entry accounting, assembly lines. However, technologies
are mobile and so potentially available everywhere at a given time, so
technology cannot fully account for differences in the extent or
effectiveness of markets among regions or nations at a given time.
An alternative explanation is differences in the quality of formal
institutions. However, formal institutions may be regarded to be
technologies. A formal constitutional document is shorter than this book
and can be carried anywhere by a single person and, in principle, enacted.
The body of civil law is somewhat longer than a constitution, but again the
formal code for such laws can be packed up and shipped as easily as a box
of pottery, which have been traded for thousands of years. That formal
institutions appear to be exportable, but are not adopted elsewhere or when
adopted do not perform equally well in all societies implies that differences
in the quality of formal institutions are at most part of the explanation for
differences in the extent of commerce among societies.
Clearly, other differences are at work. The one explored in this book
is what might be termed informal institutions or culture, namely differences
in a society’s distribution of internalized moral dispositions and norms.
These rules are not enforced through a central agency with a monopoly of
force, but are rather passed on by families and friends and enforced with a
decentralized series of rewards and punishments, often simply approval or
disapproval, but rising to approbation and disapprobation.
Language is an obvious instance of this process of cultural
transmission. A language is a series of rules for linking sounds and written
symbols with ideas. Those rules are learned at home but also at school and
in life. No two people in a community speak in exactly the same manner,
even though all follow more or less the same rules. The rules allow for
creativity, and that creativity implies that bad grammar is always as possible
as good grammar. Language skills are acquired very gradually over many
years, and persons that speak only their own language will fail to understand
ideas expressed in another language. When works in a “foreign” language
are translated into a person’s home language, their are often slight shifts in
meaning, because the words used in translation have slightly different
meanings than in the original language. Fortunately for the purposes of
communication, the differences are often not very important, but
nonetheless there are cases in which the differences matter.
This is partly because there are cases in which no single word in one
language captures what is meant in another. There is no word in English,
for example, that is equivalent to simpatico in Spanish. Such differences are
not always important. Even within a community individuals will use
language in somewhat different and inconsistent ways. Even within a
society, there are occasions in which the variety of usage extend to the
point where communication fails. Across language groups, failure to
communicate are naturally more frequent.
Language skills are somewhat transportable, which allows
communication across language groups to take place. One can learn a abit
of another language at any age with a few months of study. Nonetheless,
few adults master a “foreign” language as well as child of twelve learns his
or her home language. Other rules of proper conduct are just as complex
as grammar, and many are nearly as useful as language. For example, what
can be eaten and what should not be eaten is often a matter of life and
death. Customary theories of ethical and other appropriate conduct vary
among communities, and these too are learned gradually, and can be
important for success in a given community.
Another communitiy’s customary ethics can also be learned at any
age, yet like language are difficult to master. Moral dispositions are less
transportable as technology or the rules of formal institutions, because
such dispositions are “learned” one person at a time over many years, in
specific social and economic contexts.
The rules for a good or proper life are themselves products of long
evolution within every country, state, town, village, and family. These rules
provide largely unwritten guidelines for proper conduct within
organizations, markets, and society at large.
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There is some overlap among the rules because of survivorship
pressures, but variety exists both within and across communities. The rules
for particular settings are often subtle and difficult to apply and affects both
one’s contribution to group enterprises and one’s acceptance into
potentially productive groups and organizations.1
This book explores the extent to which differences in internalized
rules of conduct may account for difference in the extent and effectiveness
of local market. It suggests that some internalized rules of conduct are more
important for exchange and production than others, and that communities
in which such norm are relatively common tend to have larger commercial
societies.
This is not to say that one people in less commercialized societies are
necessarily less ethical than those with extensive commercial societies, only
to say that differences in the internalized norms--the rules for appropriate
conduct--at least partly account for the variation in economic development
among communities. The book suggests that it does so partly through
direct effects on personal behavior associated with internalized ethical
beliefs and partly through indirect effects of such beliefs on a community’s
institutions and public policy.
Although the book covers much ground, its main focus is on the
ethical dispositions that support the activities and institutions of
commercial societies, that is to say, on the moral foundations of capitalism.
II. Ethics and the Commercial Society
Voluntary exchange in market networks take place between
individuals, organizations, and governments. Each pair of traders seeks to
profit from their trading partner, but trade takes place only when all the
parties to a bargain believe that the result will make them better off.
Bargaining determines the terms of trade.
In the absence of perfect law enforcement, there is always some risk
that the items or services will be of lower quality than they were “supposed
to be” and so net gains that were expected from the trade were lower than
expected or negative. The more cheating there is on terms of trade (prices
and quality) the more risky trading is and the less of it tends to takes place.
The less trade takes place, the smaller markets are. The smaller markets are,
the less it pays to specialize, and the more costly those goods that are
traded tend to be.
Market supporting virtues, such as honesty and promise keeping,
reduce the risks from market exchange, which increase the expected gains
to trade realized from each transaction. Such dispositions thus tend to
increase the size of markets, the extent of specialization, and lower the cost
of the goods and services traded.
A. Ethics and Production
Much of what gets traded is produced by organized teams of
individuals, who jointly can produce more and/or better products and
services than they can independently of one another. This is not because
team members have a “group mind,” although sharing information is often
part of the process of team production. There are complementarities
among individual efforts in some activities that can increase the output of
goods and services. A group the more fully exploits those
complementarities better than others will produce more than others. In
some of these cases, new possibilities are created through such team
production. Two men may, for example, move a stone that neither could
have moved alone.
A variety of internalized rules of conduct can make it more likely that
the complementarities of team production are realized by a group or
organization. For example, an internalized work ethic induces persons to
work rather than shirk, whether monitored or not. It also tends to create a
For the purposes of this book, one’s genetic heritage is taken to be the hardware upon which the moral software of rules for living are installed. It is
the “programable” part of one’s system of beliefs, goals, and dispositions. It is this part that can be modified in the short and medium run, and it is this
part--the capacity for learning--which largely distinguishes humanity from other species. Human nature and the problems associated with survival reduce
the variation of ethical dispositions and norms among societies to ones that are viable--but significant variety remains evident.
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duty to work effectively and to aspire to excellence in the quality of the
goods and serviced produced. Such internalized ethics reduce the need for
monitoring by a firm’s management and sophisticated incentive-compatible
contracts.
Complementarities imply that persons with productivity-enhancing
internalized rules of conduct also tend to increase the productivity of other
team members, who may not share their views about the role of productive
work in a good life. The more hard working, honest, problem solvers there
are on a team, the stronger the team’s performance tends to be. With
respect to market enterprises, the result of such persons is often larger,
more specialized organizations and more and better products brought to
market.
B. Ethics and Competition
In a commercial society, firms compete with each other for
consumers. The result tends to be highly beneficial for consumers, insofar
as firms try to attract consumers to their products and service by cutting
prices and/or increasing quality. However, not all forms of competition are
value increasing or consistent with ethical theories.
For example, firms may attempt to attract consumers by advertising
features or advantages that do not really exist. Such fraudulent efforts
increase the risks of market transactions, which tends to reduce the extent
of gains to trade and extent of commerce.
Firms may also attempt to profit by reducing the extent of the
competition in various ways. They may, for example, attempt to get
government to block entry into their markets or to allow them to dominate
whole product areas or regions, without producing superior products or
services. In many cases, the pursuit of such government privileges (e.g. rent
seeking) is a competitive activity. Rent-seeking wastes resources because the
resources used to curry government favor could have been used elsewhere
to increase rather than decrease overall market output.
An ethos that supports only (or mostly) value-increasing forms of
market competition tends to reduce risks and increase average gains to
trade and the extent of that trade. Such “legitimate” forms of competition
include cost reduction, quality improvement, and the introduction of new
products. It does not include defrauding customers, seeking government
favors to shield one from the competitive efforts of one’s rivals, or, of
course, assassinating one’s rivals. Again, a subset of internalized norms
tends to support and extend the extent of commerce.
C. Ethics and the Law
The law can be a substitute for ethics, in that it also encourages
persons to avoid some kinds conduct. The law is an extrinsic motivation
to do the “right thing,” in contrast to internalized ethics, which are (or at
last become) an intrinsic motivation to do “the right thing.”
As true of ethical systems, not all legal systems support extensive,
efficient, markets. Laws can reduce the extent of markets by banning entire
markets or modes of production. It can make trade more risky, by creating
all manner of trade restrictions and privileges, and revising them in an
unpredictable manner. Laws can also make governments more susceptible
to the efforts of rent-seekers, according to definitions of and punishments
for corruption.
Laws that reinforce market enhancing moral systems by punishing
fraud, banning monopoly, and adhering to equal protection of the law tend
to increase the gains from trade for all (or nearly all) participants in
markets. Such laws and legal practices tend to support commerce rather
than suppress it.
A fine-grained, well implemented, legal code can resemble an ethical
system. It defines good and better conduct, right and wrong, and provides
incentives that reward the good and punish the wrong. Nonetheless,
although extrinsic motivations can theoretically replicate the effects of
intrinsic motivation, it cannot do so in practice. The law is costly to use and
so tends to be used only as remedy when losses are large.
A consumer is not likely to hire a lawyer costing hundreds of dollars
an hour and spend his own time in long legal proceedings in order to
recover losses from a fraudulent transaction of a few dollars or even a few
hundred dollars. Such costs imply that a system of civil law is likely to
reduce only relatively large and costly misrepresentation or failures to
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deliver on contracted promises. Lessor ones tend to go unprosecuted and
unpunished.2
Ronald Coase (xxxx) noted that cases exist in which specific laws are
not important, because give any secure system of rights, trade can take
place and trade tends to continue until all gains from trade are realized.
(This conclusion is sometimes called the Coase theorem.) However, Coase
also points out that laws matter whenever transactions costs are significant.
This would bet he case when a system of rights is not secure, predictable, or
the rights cannot be traded. In such cases, law can reduce or increase the
size of markets through effects on transactions costs. Some laws increase
transactions costs and serve as barriers to entry. Others reduce them.
It also bears noting that “good law” is not entirely independent of the
ethical theory or internalized norms. The laws and regulations that emerge
from governments are at least partly consequences of the internalized
ethical theories and other norms of government officials and the persons
they are beholden to.
III. Ethics and Public Policy
Of course, it is one thing to suggest that a subset of ethical
dispositions tends to increase the extent of commerce and another to
conclude that the results are good or desirable ones. Such assessments are
themselves fundamentally ethical in nature. Does commerce contribute to a
good life or not, and if so, to what extent?
This question has long been of interest to philosophers and religious
theorists, who for the most part have concluded that markets do not
contribute very much to a good life. Not all ethical theories support the
notion that the expansion of commerce contributes to either a good life or
a good society. There are, however, at least a few ethical theories that tend
to support both commerce itself and also accept the notion that expanding
commerce is a sign of progress rather than depravity.
Conclusions about the merits of commerce by influential
philosophers and economists matter for their communities insofar as they
influence the conclusions of men and women in positions of authority. The
latter’s decisions with respect to new laws and regulations are partly
determined by their own conclusions. Among men and women with
internalized ethical theories, these will be reflect their assessment of the
extent to which commerce directly or indirectly supports a good society.
Such ethic-based analysis also tends to influence the extent to which
laws promoting narrow economic interests are opposed. Moral outrage can
produce a strong opposition to laws--both one that promote and
discourage commerce. Which is most strongly opposed again reflects
internalized ethics, at least at the margin.
IV. Ethics and the Evaluation of Policy
The same private rules of conduct that guide one’s own life are often
used to evaluate government officials and policies, but are less apt for
comparing political-economy systems. Individual actions by policy makers
may be readily judged by the same virtues that one uses to just oneself and
friends, but systems are less amenable to analysis using such personal
ethics.
Two encompassing theories of civil virtue have been employed since
the seventeenth century to assess both policies and political economy
systems, contractarianism and utilitarianism, with the latter dominating for
most of the past two centuries. According the utility principle, a law, policy,
or system that increases the sum of utility (happiness) of all the persons
living in a community is an improvement.
That market transactions are voluntary, for example implies that
aggregate utility tends to be increased by commerce. A public policy that
reduces the scope of commerce, thus, is unlikely to be a good public policy,
because it reduces aggregate utility. For much of the past two centuries,
Criminal, as opposed to civil law, tends to be enforced by a community’s government rather than the victims of the crime. But even here, petty
crimes are less likely to attract the same degree of enforcement efforts as major crimes. Petty crimes are thus often enforced by private person and
organizations themselves, as with store guards and security camera.
2
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utilitarians have supported public policy reforms that gradually led to the
commercial society.
Economists for at least a century have the most part accept utilitarian
reasoning and employ utilitarian theory. They accept the Aristotelian
hypothesis that happiness or satisfaction is the ultimate goal, and represent
material basis of happiness with utility functions. They accept the
Benthamite hypothesis that any policy that increases aggregate utility is an
improvement. For the purposes of abstract analysis, economists routinely
represent aggregate utility mathematically as the sum of the utility functions
of persons living in the community of interest or as an increasing function
of those utility functions.3 For applied public policy analysis, aggregate “net
benefits” measured in dollars or some other currency are often used rather
than aggregate utility measured in “utils.” However, the defense of such
measures is normally utilitarian. Aggregate utility rises as social net benefits
from commerce increase.
Such arguments are convincing, only because one has adopted a
particular materialistic or happiness-based framework. However, given this
framework, it is easy to make cases that support extended markets insofar
as commerce tends to generate the material means for health and happiness
more effectively than other systems.
The utilitarian principle is not, of course, endorsed by all economists
or all philosophers writing after the mid nineteenth century. For example, a
small subset of economists insist that utility, as such, cannot be “simply
added up.” The idea of a utility function, they argue, is an analytical
convenience rather than a property of the human mind. Moreover even if it
is a reasonably accurate method of characterizing the human mind, utility
levels are subjective and cannot be reliably assessed by outsiders.
These economists limit themselves to the Pareto principles or argue in
favor of contractarian theory, as for example James Buchanan did.4 John
Rawls is famous among philosophers for his contractarian analysis of
distributive justice. Contractarian normative theories also provide ethical
support for markets, as developed in chapter 10, although not
unconditional support.
That utilitarian and contractarian theories are more influential in
societies in which commercial societies flourish than where they do not is
itself of interest and consistent with the main arguments of this book.
V. Organization of this Book
This book explores the extent to which commercial societies may be
said to have moral foundations. If this hypothesis is true, economic
development will tend to be associated with shifts in ethics that tend to be
more supportive of markets. This may occur as ethical theories change, as
the number of adherents to market supportive ethical theories increase, and
as the degree of internalization increases. Part I provides some evidence of
this in its survey of writing by philosophers and economists on the extent
to which commerce is compatible with a good life. Part II provides the
microeconomics for such effects.
Part III explores the extent to which the legal and political institutions
supportive of commerce may also be said to have ethical groundings.Clear
support for policy reform was provided by several philosophers and
economists that were widely read in the West during the period shortly
before the industrial revolution occurred. Their arguments tended to
support both liberal democracy and open competitive market systems in
which innovation was tolerated, indeed encouraged.
These same theories were refined and extended to address issues in
the twentieth century and continued to provide moral support for markets
and market-supporting institutions during that century, although not
unconditional support.
Many theorists use generalized forms of aggregate utility that are characterized by social welfare functions. The distinction is not especially important
for the purposes of the introduction. A social welfare functions allow representations of aggregate welfare that treat persons unequally, in contrast to that
used by most utilitarians.
4
State of the world A is said to be Pareto Superior to state of the world B, if and only if at least one person prefers A to B and no one prefers B to A.
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A. Part I: A Short History of the Role of Commerce in the Good
Life
B. Part II: The Economic Effects of Internalized Ethical
Dispositions
Part I provides a short survey of the work of influential philosophers,
legal scholars, political scientists, and economists who analyzed both
markets and ethics. The ethics of commerce is not a subject that is usually
focused on by economists or philosophers, but both philosophical and
economic analysis often mention economic or ethical issues in passing.
That some ethical beliefs appear to support markets may be intuitively
obvious, yet it is not necessarily the case that one’s intuition is correct. To
explore the effects of ethics on the extent of markets, part II brings ethics
into the standard rational choice models of game theory and
microeconomics.
The philosophers focused on are all widely read ones who were
influential in their times and often well after their times. Their work thus
also provides a window in the ethics of literate persons during the periods
in which they were writing. Philosophers routinely take the customary
ethics of their communities for granted or use them as a source of evidence
in launching their efforts to devise over-arching ethical theories. Their
subsequent influence is evidence in their incorporation into school caricula
and through citations in subsequent work. The survey, introduces readers
to some basic philosophical theories of ethics and demonstrates that
philosophy and economics are not entirely separate subjects.
The analysis points out that trade is not automatic, as often assumed
by economists. In many cases, trade would not occur without internalized
ethical rules, although some rules are more supportive of economic activity
than others. Ethics is also shown to have effects on the performance of
economic organizations.
There is no irreconcilable conflict between ethics and commerce
according to an influential subset of Western philosophers and economists.
For example, Aristotle, Grotius, La Court, Baxter, Smith, Bentham, Bastiat,
Mill, and Spencer--among others--all provide arguments that support
relatively open and competitive markets.
The survey also provides evidence of the evolution of philosophical
thought on the appropriate role of commerce in the direction of greater
support for commerce. The later was according to Max Weber an
important causal link in the chain of events that led to the commercial
society of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century societies.
Part II also explores the extent to which markets may be said to
support a subset of ethical dispositions. For example, market competition
tends to weed out least efficient and least honest firms. A firm that
defrauded all of its consumers would tend to lose customers to more
honest ones as consumers shifted their purchase to firms whose products
worked as claimed.
This effect tends to induce firms to hire persons with the ethical
dispositions directly or indirectly valued by consumers. This employment
effect tends to be true for ethical firm owners, who may value such persons
for their traits as well as their productivity, but also by pragmatists seeking
only to maximize profits. In either case, market competition may be said to
reward ethical behavior and to induce it among persons not otherwise
ethically inclined.5
Overall the analysis of Part II suggests that the shifts in norms
indicated in part I of the book could have provided the trigger that induced
the commercial society to emerge in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
See Congleton and Vanberg (1992) for an analysis of how an exit option (voluntary association) can support conditional dispositions to cooperate in
group settings, what might be considered moral behavior, to emerge in a setting where cooperation cannot be taken for granted..
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C. Part III: Improving the Commercial Society
Part III explores how ethics affect assessments of the performance of
market systems and of the relative merits of institutions and laws that affect
the magnitude and scope of economic activity.
It bears noting that to judge whether a more extensive commercial
society is better than a less extensive one is fundamentally an ethical
question. Are the activities themselves good, bad or neutral? Are the results
“good,” “just,” or “fair?” Does a society become better as commerce
expands or not? If so, can commerce itself be improved as an engine of
progress?
Contemporary welfare economics uses a utilitarian approach to
answer such questions. It demonstrates that competitive markets have
many attractive properties, monopolies less so. The income distribution
that emerges may generally increase aggregate utility, but is unlikely to
maximize it. Markets in which externalities are significant may produce
outputs other than those which maximize social net benefits or aggregate
utility, but these are easily corrected.
As economic modeling became more precise, analytical critics of
markets based on utilitarian and contractarian theories became
commonplace. The relative merits of laws, taxes, and regulations that can
improve a commercial society are also routinely analyzed using welfare
economics. Among the more recent arguments Overall, the results
continue to broadly support a commercial society, although that support is
not unconditional.
After WWII, the public choice school began to criticize an implicit
assumption of utilitarians and welfare economics, namely that the
government was itself fundamentally utilitarian. If that is not the case, and
there are many reasons for concluding so, many of the policy
recommendations the emerge from utilitarian analysis are politically
infeasible. Given this, market outcomes should be regarded as better than
they might have appeared, that is to say closer to the feasible ideal than
implied by analyses that ignore the role of politics in creating public
policies. Proposals for improvements should be politically feasible as well
as economically so.
Most neoclassical models are equilibrium models that characterize
long run tendencies without shedding much light on year to year dynamics.
Even ignoring business cycles, dynamic markets generate a variety of
uncertainties as consumer tastes change, innovations in products take
place, and as new production methods are introduced. To accept the
dynamics of a commercial society is to conclude that “progress” takes
place, that is to say that the average quality of life is improved and/or that
aggregate utility is increased through innovation and competition. Progress,
perhaps surprisingly, is both defined in ethical terms and support for the
policies that allow or discourage also have ethical foundations.
VI. Conclusions
Markets can exist with little or no institutional support. The
contraband markets inside and outside prisons, for example, are
notoriously difficult to eliminate. Markets without institutional support
tend to be smaller and less connected than ones in which market
supporting ethics and norms are widespread. Similarly, markets without
ethical participants also tend to be small and less connected. There is less
trust and more risk associated with all economic transactions in such
environments.
The same logic that applies to markets also applies to institutions.
The institutions that may potentially support markets tend to work better
when there are dutiful persons occupying positions of authority within
them. A perfectly constructed civil law will provide little support to
commerce, if court decisions simply go to the highest bidder or are used to
extract wealth and deference from those silly enough to bring cases before
its judges. Moreover, a legislature or authoritarian that anticipates such
courts would have little reason to develop a perfect Coasian civil law. Again
there are ethical foundations both in the laws themselves and in the
behavior that produces effective legal systems.
All this suggests that culture matters, specifically that part of culture
that is referred to as ethics in this book. The internalized rules of conduct
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All this suggests that contemporary commercial societies have ethical
foundations. If so, a further implication of this study is that societies
interested in the material comforts should attempt to understand the
subsets of ethical dispositions that provide their foundations. This book
begins that project. .
VII. Acknowledgments
Universe of Dispositions
Universe of Moral Dispositions
Market
Supporting
Democracy
Supporting
that constrain human actions can create both opportunities for exchange
and undermine them. One’s perception of duty may lead one to work hard
and be fair or to blow up buildings and destroy one’s rivals. Honor among
thieves is not the same as honor among soldiers or honor among
commercial enterprises. Reputation matters in all such circumstances, but
not always one for fairness and honesty, nor ones that tend to increase the
gains from trade in the commercial sense of the term.
Market supporting ethical dispositions
Democracy supporting ethical dispositions
This book has benefited from numerous opportunities to present
material from various chapters and to discuss its core ideas with friends and
colleagues. The project began two decades ago with stimulating seminar on
the work ethic by James Buchanan. Internalized rules of conduct and
norms played roles in several papers and a book written at George Mason
University, but no over arching project was conceived until moving to West
Virginia University a few years ago.
Universe of ethical dispositions
Universe of all dispositions including ethical and pragmatic ones
The basic arguments and material were deepened and organized for a
class taught to a group of upper level economics and philosophy students at
West Virginia University. Several helpful comments were obtained from
some very fine students. Those of xxxx and xxxx were especially helpful.
Several preliminary chapter were discussed at the department’s book club
where the comments of xxxx, xxxx, and xxxx induced revisions. The book
also benefited from conversations with xxxx, xxxx, xxxx, and xxxx, and
from the support of Scott Paris, whose encouragement has helped me press
on with this project during a very busy two year period.
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