Market Morality Quotes

One of the appeals of markets, as a public philosophy, is they seem to spare us the need to engage in public arguments about the meaning of goods. So markets seem to enable us to be non-judgmental about values. But I think that's a mistake.

He that sells his corn in a town pressed with famine at the utmost rate he can get for it does no unjustice against the common rule of traffic, yet if he carry it away unless they will give him more than they are able, or extorts so much from their present necessity as not to leave them the means of subsistence afterwards, he offends against the common rule of charity as a man

I was a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) in Washington, and my neighbor was Michael Novak, a theologian and philosopher who has written about issues like the morality of capitalism and the Christian roots of free markets. It's possible to be fascinated intellectually with the Christian heritage without being devout.

Remember that banks aren't markets. The market is amoral. The market doesn't care who you are. You're a trade to the market. The market will sell you if they think you're riskier.

No individual anonymous participant can influence the prices and therefore you really can speculate in the market without paying attention to morality. That's one of the positive features of markets. That's why they function.

Distance does not decide who is your brother and who is not. The church is going to have to become the conscience of the free market if it's to have any meaning in this world - and stop being its apologist.

We might think of dollars as being 'certificates of performance.' The better I serve my fellow man, and the higher the value he places on that service, the more certificates of performance he gives me. The more certificates I earn, the greater my claim on the goods my fellow man produces. That's the morality of the market. In order for one to have a claim on what his fellow man produces, he must first serve him.

We're always projecting our moral categories on things. I think that's inevitable. But capitalism places no particular value on morality. Morality in the market is enforced by contract and regulation and law, because morality is understood to be in conflict with the motive force of greed and accumulation.