Comment 74898

By jackson (anonymous) | Posted February 29, 2012 at 16:29:04 in reply to Comment 74866

I should read this. I would probably get to page 15 and then zzzzzzz.

'without morality - without sympathy and a well-developed sense of fairness, justice and reciprocity - it becomes impossible to engage in good-faith market transactions of the sort that, taken as a whole, tend to increase wealth and uplift society.'

I completely agree. A good faith transaction, continuing my gas example earlier, would involve me buying gas with cash or credit and them selling it to me. A bad faith one would be me giving counterfeit bills or them selling me diluted gas.

The externalities of the transaction are the things people seem to be concerned about. I'm not saying you can't make an ethical decision not to buy gas, or that this is not meaningful or even effective for single issues like blood diamonds. City council has a penchant for making grandiose boycotts signifying nothing: ie shark fin soup. But I don't think those decisions will impact the supply and demand of the product on a large scale.

It's similar to the point people make here about policing v planning. Individual training to change behaviour is largely insignificant compared to regulation.

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