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Are Markets Amenable to Consequentialist Evaluation?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 December 2024

Luke Semrau
Luke Semrau*
Affiliation:
Bloomsburg University, USA
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Abstract

There is an ongoing debate over the moral limits of the market. Many participants endorse the plausible idea that a market’s moral status depends, at least in part, on its consequences. For example, Satz holds that markets whose operation undermines citizens’ ability to interact as equals are bad. And Brennan and Jaworski maintain that markets trading in any good or service permissibly possessed may be arranged to operate without bad consequences. This plausible normative claim about markets depends on a descriptive one. Namely, that individual markets have descriptive properties which would provide a suitable basis for their consequentialist evaluation. This descriptive claim, I argue, is false. Markets’ consequences are a joint production. There is no principled means by which the consequences of one may be distinguished from those of another. Thus, the plausible idea is false. A market’s moral status cannot depend on its consequences.

Keywords

moral limits of marketscommodificationmarketsconsequentialism

Information

Type
Article
Information
Business Ethics Quarterly , Volume 35 , Issue 3 , July 2025 , pp. 423 - 439
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Society for Business Ethics

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