“Moral Misunderstanding & the Justification of Markets” Summary Paragraphs

The paragraphs on the following slides have been written by students in response to the question posed on the title slide. These are model responses to the question, based on the article. Particularly if you found the article to be confusing, please study these paragraphs.

The Golden Rule and the free market coexist because the Golden Rule shouldn’t necessarily be applied to the economy. As humans we are self-interested, but not necessarily selfish. We should try to follow something similar to the Golden Rule because we want to be fair and successful. We make mistakes and there’s no way of knowing how our decisions affect other things, like the economy.

According to Heyne, the Golden Rule can be applied to people’s lives, but cannot work in a free market economy. He writes this because people are motivated by self-interest which keeps our economy going. If everyone practiced the Golden Rule in the free market economy it would suffer and possibly collapse. We cannot know everything and what is always best for others so we look out for ourselves.