Although we spend a great deal of time teaching children to think critically, it actually does not take a great deal of insight or education to uncover moral flaws in the world around us. For example, when it comes to the market economy, no one has much difficulty coming up with an objection to the arrangement under which affluent western consumers line up to pay $3 for a fancy cup of coffee, while the farmers who grow the coffee beans earn less than that in a day.
Indeed, the hard part is not really spotting these problems, but figuring out what to do about them. Some people are quite optimistic that solutions can be found. The great economist Kenneth Arrow once declared that “when the market fails to achieve an optimal state, society will, to some extent at least, recognize the gap and non-market social institutions will arise attempting to bridge it.” Would that it were so!
Arrow made this remark in 1963, in the context of a prescient discussion of...
Joseph Heath teaches philosophy at the University of Toronto. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.
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