The Morality of Markets.

• Author: Leef, George
• Position: Do Markets Corrupt Our Morals? - Book review

Do Markets Corrupt

Our Morals?

By Virgil Henry Storr and Ginny Seung Choi

296 pp.; Palgrave

Macmillan, 2019

When humans exchange goods, they expect to better themselves. Over

history, this simple act of voluntary trade-entering into market transactions--has faced a surprising amount of criticism. Aristotle, for instance, thought that those who earned their living by commerce were not righteous. St. Thomas Aquinas taught that it was sinful to profit unless trade took place at the "just price." In the 18th and 19th centuries, critics such as jean Jacques Rousseau and Karl Marx argued that markets were divisive and exploitative, bringing out the worst in people. And in the present, a host of scholars and politicians complain that markets prey on the weak and undermine human communities.

Although some scholars have defended the morality of markets, their defenses have often been half-hearted, conceding that economic freedom may bring out bad human traits but arguing that the overall benefits of exchange make it worthwhile. We need an unapologetic defense of the morality of markets and this book by Virgil Henry Storr and Ginny Seung Choi provides exactly that. Storr is an assistant professor of economics at George Mason University and

Choi is a senior research associate at the university's Mercatus Center.

As they see the problem:

Even people who are typically sanguine about markets worry that we risk losing our souls when we engage in market activities. Specifically, the concern is that the more we engage in market activity, the more likely we are to become, at best, selfish and corrupt, and, at worst, rapacious and debased. The truth, Storr and Choi argue, is the other way around; market activity makes people morally better. It rewards virtues and penalizes vices. They write:

We find that rather than corrupting our morals, the opposite is true. The evidence suggests that the market actually improves our morals. There are two main arguments that we advance in support of this claim. First, we argue that people can improve their lives through markets. People in market societies are wealthier, healthier, happier, and better connected than people in nonmarket societies.... Second, we argue that the market is a moral space that both depends on its participants being virtuous and also rewards them for being virtuous. The debate over the morality of the market is usually carried out purely at the rhetorical level. Market opponents simply assert that market activity upsets their sensibilities, using loaded terms such as "commodification," "exploitation," and even "zombie."...