The Moral Ecology of Markets: Assessing Claims about Markets and Justice

Extract

The Moral Ecology of Markets: Assessing Claims about Markets and Justice, Daniel K. Finn, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006, pp. ix, 169.

There is a subtitle to this book: “Assessing Claims about Markets and Justice.” Its aim is not to settle the question of how just markets are, but rather to identify the framework within which the morality of markets can be profitably discussed. In the opening chapter, he takes to task some celebrated economists who, he thinks, try to defend markets without moral judgment. We can certainly agree that if they really thought they were doing that, their task was hopeless. But more likely they felt their moral premises were uncontroversial.