Moral Progress and Markets
Markets drive moral progress by presenting people with deeper and more interesting philosophical problems that arise when markets are free to transform society through material abundance, commercial innovation, and lifestyle freedom.
Yet the benefits of this moral progress don’t arrive immediately. First, society passes through a period of genuine uncertainty — one that can look, from the inside, very much like calamity.
Consider industrialization. It created the conditions for a moral panic about the seemingly eternal exploitation of the working class.
But those very conditions — the vast, open, profitable markets that produced the suffering — also forced people to think more deeply about equal rights and a better future for workers.
And while much of that thinking was reactionary — retreating to familiar abstractions rather than following markets into new philosophical territory — markets still drove moral progress by forcing philosophers to confront novel problems that demanded novel solutions.
When the market eventually exposed the limitations of Marx’s and Dewey’s theorizing, new thinkers emerged to challenge their conventional wisdom. Hayek, Polanyi, and Popper.
And there are thinkers still doing this work today — trying to meet the market’s persistent demand for a clearer, more robust moral philosophy.
Compare this to the Dark Ages. Philosophers then spent most of their time arguing about abstract distinctions that only they were allowed to read, understand, and debate. And even if the public had been encouraged to participate, it wouldn’t have mattered — philosophers were too busy quibbling over terms like haecceity, quiddity, and perseity.
Today the moral debates are much richer.
And so is the rest of humanity.
Zigmund Reichenbach has an M.A. in Philosophy from West Chester University and is a professional advocate for less government. You can help him combat bad ideas in politics and philosophy by donating to his work at https://ko-fi.com/zigmundreichenbach .
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