Morality and the Market Economy

For all of you out there who still think that I (along with all other Libertarians) am a soulless, ethically challenged corporate shill because I support a truly free market, I present the hereto linked article: Plunder or Enterprise: The World's Choice, by Thomas E Woods

It clearly illustrates the exact reasons for which I support the market economy...not because I think businesses are all great and wonderful, but because the free market is a framework that encourages morality and ethical behavior while punishing the opposite. I encourage you to read the whole thing, but there are a few passages that I think are particularly poignant:

One of the market's virtues, and the reason it enables so much peaceful interaction and cooperation among such a great variety of peoples, is that it demands of its participants only that they observe a relatively few basic principles, among them honesty, the sanctity of contracts, and respect for private property.

By observing (and enforcing) these few simple rules, a very strong ethical and moral system is created...one that fosters peaceful exchange and concern for the well-being of others:

The market all but compels people to be other-regarding, but not by means of intimidation, threats, and propaganda, as in socialist and statist systems. It employs the perfectly normal, morally acceptable desire to improve one's material conditions and station in life, both of which can grow under capitalism only by directing one's efforts to the production of a good or service that improves the well-being of his fellow man.

The author also addresses various objections to the market by its critics. For instance,

It takes little imagination to surmise how critics of the market would respond to such a claim [that the market itself encourages moral behavior.] Doesn't the market encourage greed, rivalry, and discord? Does it not urge people to think only of themselves, accumulating wealth with no thought to any other concern?

And responds...

That human beings seek their own well-being and that of those close to them is not an especially provocative discovery. What is important is that this universal aspect of human nature persists no matter what economic system is in place; it merely expresses itself in different forms. For all their saccharine rhetoric, for example, communist apparatchiks were not known for their disinterested commitment to the common good. They, too, sought to improve their own well-being — except they lived in a system in which all such improvements came at the expense of their fellow human beings, rather than, as in a market economy, as a reward for serving them.

The author goes on to challenge several criticisms of the market economy, each time responding with what I feel is an excellent illustration of some of the best reasons to support the free market.