Is the Free Market System Ethically Superior?
Jan 3, 2007 - The morality of capitalism has been debated since Adam Smith published The Wealth of Nations in 1776. Yet, according to Union University economist Dr. Walt Padelford, the modern business school has taken a strictly pragmatic approach in this debate.
“There is an interesting contrast between the self-consciously ‘non-ethical’ character of modern economics and the historical evolution of modern economics largely as an offshoot of ethics,” says Padelford.
“Not only was the so-called father of modern economics’, Adam Smith, a Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Glasgow, but the subject of economics was for centuries viewed as a branch of ethics. The fact that economics used to be taught at Cambridge until fairly recently simply as a part of ‘the Moral Science Tripos’ is no more than an instance of the traditional diagnosis of the nature of economics,” says Padelford.
He feels strongly that it is crucial for business school faculty to continue to develop a moral argument in favor of free markets.
That is precisely what Padelford has done in his recent article entitled “The Morality of Profit Making: A Scale Development” published in The Journal of Business & Economics Perspectives.
Dr. Darin White, Director of Academic Research for the McAfee School of Business and co-author says, “This research can be used to continue to refine the moral argument in terms of the legitimacy of the free market system so as not to rely exclusively on the pragmatic argument that “capitalism works. This argument is not enough to capture the imagination of ethically minded individuals.”
For more information about this story contact Dr. Walton Padelford, University Professor of Economics, at wpadelfo@uu.edu or 731.661.5362.
MCAFEE SCHOOL OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION
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