Capitalism Cultivates Virtue, Not Vice

A Discussion of Brennan’s “Do Markets Corrupt?” Part 1

Photo by John Mukiibi Elijah on Unsplash

A theme I keep returning to is that market capitalism is the best economic system humans have ever implemented even with any imperfections that can be pointed out.

The strength of anti-capitalist views comes from many sources, some practically inborn. Here is one blog on a book, Peter Foster’s Why We Bite the Invisible Hand, that wrestled with this theme.

Are We Anti-Capitalist by Design or by Evolution?

Jason Brennan is engaging with this idea in his article by challenging the charge that market centered systems corrupt the people who participate. To the contrary, he presents evidence that exposure to the marketplace tends to increase virtue rather than vice. (p. 236)

Those who claim that markets corrupt owe us proper empirical evidence that such corruption does in fact occur. Proponents must supply us with the kind of sustained empirical analysis that would merit publication in a social scientific academic journal. Most critics of the market society, including Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Karl Marx, G…