Comment by TeMPOraL
5 years ago
Indeed. That's why I'm worried when I see interpersonal relations being replaced by market rules. Markets have no morals, principles and ethics by default, and generally consider these factors to be inefficiencies.
5 years ago
Indeed. That's why I'm worried when I see interpersonal relations being replaced by market rules. Markets have no morals, principles and ethics by default, and generally consider these factors to be inefficiencies.
>Markets have no morals, principles and ethics by default
That's not exactly true. "Markets" are made of people, and the morals principles and ethics of each participant imbue any given market with certain characteristics. The market doesn't reflect the exact morals of one particular actor, but it is nevertheless a product of them. Think matrix multiplication.
For examples look at Roman civilization, Jewish civilization, the meeting of the two. Or look at the Wire.
I agree that "morals principles and ethics of each participant imbue any given market with certain characteristics". I was highlighting that these are incidental, not structural in the market. And my main point is: these characteristics are not stable. More than that, these characteristics are actively being diminished, ground down by the market - and that is a structural aspect.
This happens through competitive pressure. If, as a market player, do something slightly shady to get an edge, I'll get ahead and my competitors will either have to do the same, or risk losing. When enough market players go along, the slightly shady things becomes a baseline, "standard business practice", and morality on the market is that much eroded. Then someone else starts getting ahead on being even more shady, and the process repeats.
(Ironically, we often call this chipping away at ethics/morality "innovation".)