Whole Foods CEO John Mackey on the Moral Case for Capitalism
Posted: August 10, 2012 Filed under: Capitalism, Morals, Uncategorized Leave a comment »Sent to you via Google Reader
Whole Foods CEO John Mackey on the Moral Case for Capitalism
Review of Michael J. Sandel’s What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limit of Markets
Posted: August 7, 2012 Filed under: McCloskey, Michael J. Sandel, Morals | Tags: Mich Leave a comment »
http://www.deirdremccloskey.com/editorials/sandel.php
Calling Deirdre McCloskey
Posted: August 6, 2012 Filed under: McCloskey, Morals, Uncategorized Leave a comment »Sent to you via Google Reader
Calling Deirdre McCloskey
Six Theses on Extremely Unjust Laws I Dare You to Dispute
Posted: June 17, 2012 Filed under: Morals, Uncategorized Leave a comment »Sent to you via Google Reader
Six Theses on Extremely Unjust Laws I Dare You to Dispute
Is There a Moral Case for ObamaCare?
Posted: July 6, 2011 Filed under: Health Care, Morals Leave a comment »
http://healthblog.ncpa.org/is-there-a-moral-case-for-obamacare/
The Moral Heart of Economics
Posted: January 25, 2011 Filed under: Morals Leave a comment »
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/25/the-moral-heart-of-economics/
Why Businesses Don’t Experiment
Posted: April 10, 2010 Filed under: Capitalism, Doux Commerce Thesis, Greed, Morals, Uncategorized 1 Comment »Sent to you via Google Reader
Why Businesses Don’t Experiment
Debating the Merits and Morality of Trade
Posted: April 6, 2010 Filed under: Ethics, Morals, Trade, Uncategorized Leave a comment »Sent to you via Google Reader
Debating the Merits and Morality of Trade
Reciprocity, Altruism and the Civil Society: In Praise of Heterogeneity
Posted: March 19, 2010 Filed under: Endogenous Rules, Morals, Reciprocity Leave a comment »
Capitalism has made society ‘kinder’: study
Posted: March 19, 2010 Filed under: Capitalism, Ethics, Markets, Morals Leave a comment »
http://www.nationalpost.com/ews/story.html?id=2699128
http://sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/57417/title/Farmings_rise_cultivated_fair_deals
http://reason.com/blog/2010/03/18/science-shows-that-markets-mak
Evolution of Cooperation and Altruism Among Robots
Posted: March 16, 2010 Filed under: Anarchy, Endogenous Rules, Evolution, Morals, Spontaneous Order Leave a comment »“Here, we describe selected studies of experimental evolution with robots to illustrate how the process of natural selection can lead to the evolution of complex traits such as adaptive behaviours. Just a few hundred generations of selection are sufficient to allow robots to evolve collision-free movement, homing, sophisticated predator versus prey strategies, coadaptation of brains and bodies, cooperation, and even altruism.”
“In all cases, robots initially exhibited completely uncoordinated behaviour because their genomes had random values. However, a few hundreds of generations of random mutations and selective reproduction were sufficient to promote the evolution of efficient behaviours in a wide range of environmental conditions. The ability of robots to orientate, escape predators, and even cooperate is particularly remarkable given that they had deliberately simple genotypes directly mapped into the connection weights of neural networks comprising only a few dozen neurons.”
http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pbio.1000292
Mises Quote
Posted: March 15, 2010 Filed under: Free markets, Government, Morals, Quotes Leave a comment »“If one rejects laissez faire on account of mans fallibility and moral weakness, one must for the same reason also reject every kind of government action.” – Ludwig Von Mises
Unintended Consequences
Posted: March 14, 2010 Filed under: Economics, Ethics, Greed, Methodology, Morals Leave a comment »Professor Steven Horwitz:
“
Consider the two-by-two matrix below.
We have moral language for three of the four possible combinations of intent and outcome. Vice and virtue are easy enough, as they are our common terms for discussing the morality or desirability of our actions when the outcomes match our intentions. But what about when they don’t? We have the category of “negligence” when we cause negative outcomes we did not intend, such as failing to set the brake on a car that rolls down a hill and damages property. But we do not have a word for the unintentional doing of good! That missing box is filled in by economics and good social science as they explain how, under the right institutional framework, the pursuit of self-interest leads to unintended benefits for society as a whole.”
http://www.thefreemanonline.org/featured/unintended-consequences/
“Are Economists Basically Immoral?” and Other Essays on Economics, Ethics, and Religion
Posted: March 13, 2010 Filed under: Ethics, Morals, Unintended Consequences Leave a comment »“…if everyone focused on the needs of others, the results would be disastrous: the system would “come to a halt, at enormous cost to all participants if they were to act consistently on the principle of advancing the welfare of the most needy or most worthy—rather than focusing on the accomplishment of their own personal goals” (p. 33).”
http://www.independent.org/publications/tir/article.asp?a=772
SOME COMMON MISCONCEPTIONS IN DISCUSSION OF MARKETS AND MORALITY
Posted: March 1, 2010 Filed under: Markets, Morals Leave a comment »“The market has a moral dimension; economics, the study of the marketplace, does not. Economics deals with a world of scarcity, not a Garden of Eden in which all that is necessary to get what we want is a willingness to demand it. Discussions of morality and market, if they are to be fruitful, must recognise these basic facts.”
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/123305192/abstract
On the Ethics of Charging to Shovel Snow
Posted: February 11, 2010 Filed under: Ethics, Markets, Morals, Uncategorized Leave a comment »Sent to you via Google Reader
On the Ethics of Charging to Shovel Snow
Hayek on Prices
Posted: February 7, 2010 Filed under: Knowledge, Knowledge Problems, Morals, Prices, Profit, Quotes Leave a comment »“Prices and profits are all that most producers need to be able to serve more effectively the needs of men they do not know. They are a tool for searching – just as…the telescope extends the range of vision…The disdain of profit is due to ignorance.”
- F.A. Hayek, Fatal Conceit, Page 104
Hayek on the Morality of the Market
Posted: February 6, 2010 Filed under: Altruism, Hayek, Ignorance, Knowledge, Markets, Morals, Quotes, Unintended Consequences Leave a comment »“The morals of the market do lead us to benefit others, not by our intending to do so, but by making us act in a manner which, nonetheless, will have just that effect. The extended order circumvents individual ignorance in a way that good intentions alone cannot do – and thereby does make our efforts altruistic in their effects.”
- F.A. Hayek, Fatal Conceit, page 81
“Do the Right Thing:” The Effects of Moral Suasion on Cooperation
Posted: December 7, 2009 Filed under: Cooperation, Morals, Religion Leave a comment »“The use of moral appeals to affect the behavior of others is pervasive (from the pulpit to ethics classes) but little is known about the effects of moral suasion on behavior. In a series of experiments we study whether moral suasion affects behavior in voluntary contribution games and mechanisms by which behavior is altered. We find that observing a message with a moral standard according to the golden rule or, alternatively, utilitarian philosophy, results in a significant but transitory increase in contributions above the levels observed for subjects that did not receive a message or received a message that advised them to contribute without a moral rationale. When players have the option of punishing each other after the contribution stage the effect of the moral messages on contributions becomes persistent: punishments and moral messages interact to sustain cooperation. We investigate the mechanism through which moral suasion operates and find it to involve both expectation- and preference-shifting effects. These results suggest that the use of moral appeals can be an effective way of promoting cooperation.”
http://papers.nber.org/papers/w15559#fromrss
