[vezzy-fnord]

Amorality in an economic system is a good thing. It means that participants impute their values within the institutional framework. An economic system actually designed to be "moral" (I can't think of anything other than Marxism-Leninism, everything else is hypothetical cost-the-limit-of-price, anti-usury, Social Credit and mutual aid arrangements) would be not only inflexible, but such a morality would necessarily emanate from a top-down institution that is immoral itself.

[legulere]

But are the values of the participants really the goals of a free market economy and what it leads to? I think absolutely not - it's earning as much money as possible.

The things we actually see as good are just side effects. Free market systems work well, seem fair most of the time and have lots of positive side effects. However they also have negative side effects and I don't think participants alone can really avoid them. There are some cases of executives later on regretting that they couldn't act in another way because they had to keep shareholder value in mind.

That's why we have regulation in our actual economic systems. Of course views on what has to be regulated and how widely differ, but this is where our morality comes into the economic system (and all the other rules that act as a counter-measurement for the cases where free market economy isn't working).

[vezzy-fnord]

Profit maximization is one goal among market participants, though not the only one, since the market also encompasses modes of organization embarked on for communal and personal reasons as well.

Profits are a motivation to act, but they may be nonpecuniary and psychic. Nor is "earning money" the ultimate goal in any sense, insofar as holding nominal money balances as a store of value becomes intractable with greater capacity. Now, subpar monetary and financial arrangements may distort savings-investment decisions, but this is not an intrinsic market deficiency.

Regretting your decisions ex ante is inherent to humanity, not to economic systems.

Regulation is and has emerged endogenously. Guilds, unions, standards agencies and other quality assurance bodies arise without state action.

[TheOtherHobbes]

I'm not clear how that would be different to the top-down economy and moral pretensions of bankers and investors that we have now.

When phrases like "moral hazard" are used to describe gambling risk, "amoral" is hardly the most apt description of a system that actually tries to define social and political morality for the entire world of work and business.

The reality is that mainstream economics has always been more a branch of moral philosophy than of empirical science. It's a tool of persuasion that tries to propagate its values through rhetoric and the use of economic, political and physical force.

That's quite close to the usual definition of a priesthood. It's only "amoral" in the sense that the ethics of the priesthood are quite alien to those of many adult humans.

[mlangdon]

This is what I'm saying, only if you think unfettered free marketeering is an unalloyed good would you propose that the antithetical position is that the market is evil.

If I say I want restrictions on the market so that our planet is still liveable in 2100, I am not saying the market is evil. I'm merely stating my moral (in that there is a value judgment) position in contrast to the "free" market moral position. If I say that unfettered markets lead to evil, I'm merely contending with that value judgment, not whether there should a market in general. There's an incredible amount of space between a rampant libertarian market and Communism. It's childish to pretend otherwise.

[dawnbreez]

>I'm not clear how that would be different to the top-down economy and moral pretensions of bankers and investors that we have now.

To be fair, the economy is both so heavily regulated and so stagnated that it barely counts as a free market anymore.

Part of the problem is that nobody is willing to fight the "priests", as you put it. Why try to beat those massive banks? They have far too much money for you to ever defeat them. But having that much money and nobody to make them work for it is precisely why we need new banks to compete with the old ones.

[st3v3r]

I disagree. Amorality in an economic system encourages things like Martin Shkreli, and ignoring externalities like pollution, making life worse for everyone else for the benefit of a few.

[vezzy-fnord]

"Making life worse for everyone else for the benefit of a few" is the inevitable result of any policy that places upper bounds on consumer preferences and transaction opportunities in a market. It is the imposition of a morality that leads to fragility, since the morality in question is almost invariably in favor of the statesman and the businessman.