Free Market Morality

[Mikee]

I came across this video by Tyler Cowen on free markets and morality

do you guys agree/disagree with its premise?

[Dante]

The moral code he assumes here appears to be completely altruistic. He describes the two ends of the spectrum as "depraved" versus "generous," and defends the average person as "selfish but reasonably so."

He refers to some amount of selfishness as "healthy," and refers to "striving for their own happiness and the happiness of their families" as a "noble end" for people, but phrases it such that we understand this as a less than fully noble end. People could be more morally perfect by disregarding these ends in favor of complete "generosity" or "saintliness." Thus, his perspective seems to be that most people are morally imperfect, but they are perfectly justified in not striving for moral perfection. This is a perspective that really doesn't take morality too seriously, and it's the perspective that altruists almost inevitably have to take. When complete moral perfection involves total disregard for yourself, it's just not appropriate to expect people to take morality all the way. Unfortunately, this viewpoint of morality is very heavily entrenched in the mindsets of a huge segment of the population.

The pitfalls of using this type of moral code to defend the free market is that it only works under the belief that it's okay to be satisfied with being morally gray. You don't have a rigorous moral defense of people pursuing their own interest in the marketplace, other than to simply say that morality should be balanced with other things (like practicality).

The part on regulation was okay; I agree that the two specific types of "regulation" that he mentioned are indeed appropriate for the role of government (enforcing contracts and stopping fraud). And he's right that regulation has gone far beyond these types of things into places it has no business being. However, in this section he fails to point to the principle differentiating the "appropriate" regulation from "inappropriate" (which is individual rights). Without this crucial piece, his argument does not give a convincing stopping place for this rolling back of regulation, or any principled way to determine which regulations to roll back and which to keep. All he can say without that is that we currently have too much regulation, and we should get rid of some of it.

I've actually heard this guy speak a couple of times and sat down with him once a few summers ago. He's an incredibly bright and inquisitive guy, very well-informed on a lot of things. Even though obviously I think he's very wrong on a lot of topics, I do have a lot of respect for him.