Cardus: Market economy? Yes! Market society? No!
…Here at the Work Research Foundation we believe in markets. We believe markets to be the best way—no, the only sane way—to structure interactions in economic life. We don't only believe this because of the historical evidence from the complete failure and ghastly horror of socialism and fascism, but even more because we consider markets to be built into the very design of economic life. Markets as the proper setting for economic interaction, for buying and selling, are in our view a feature of the structure of reality. So we flagrantly support the idea and the reality of a market economy.
But this does not mean we support the idea of a market society—what Warren Bennis calls "a bottom-line society." Human life is not all about economics. Contrary to rational choice theory, we human beings do not make all of our decisions simply in terms of cost/benefit analyses.
While economic life needs room to flourish, and needs protection from the encroachment of excessive government intrusion, it also needs limits. The sphere of economic life does not only provide businesses with a space for their wealth-generating manufacture of products and provision of services, and labour unions with a space for negotiating fair participation in these activities—it also sets the outer limits for business and labour. …
Leave a Reply