This study which was reported last week was not well reported in some places, but I think this explanation at the link does it pretty well. The opening paragraphs:
How do ethics and the free market interact? As the authors of a new paper on the topic point out, the answer is often complicated. In the past, Western economies had vigorous markets for things we now consider entirely unethical, like slaves and Papal forgiveness for sins. Ending those practices took long and bloody struggles. But was this because the market simply reflects the ethics of the day, or does engaging in a market alter people's perception of what's ethical?The article then goes into detail as to how the experiment worked. It's pretty fascinating.
To find out, the authors of the paper set up a market for an item that is ethically controversial: the lives of lab animals. They found that, for most people, keeping a mouse alive, even at someone else's cost, is only worth a limited amount of money. But that amount goes down dramatically once market-based buying and selling is involved.
Fortunately, while the study could be used by to attack markets and capitalism, the authors do recognize something important:
....they're well aware that other forms of resource distribution have fostered some fantastically unethical behavior. Or, as they put it in more academic terms, "Other organizational forms of allocation and price determination such as in totalitarian systems or command societies do not generically place higher value on moral outcomes."Still, it probably does have something useful to think about in terms of markets and ethics.
No comments:
Post a Comment