Truth, Morals, and the Market

It's been a lot of fun here at Acton U. so far. I have heard a lot about the relationship between ethics and free markets and it has really helped me to synthesize some of my own ideas on the connections among ethics, economics, justice, truth, and beauty (I'll get more into this later). A lot of emphasis has been made regarding the importance of having moral people in a market system, since it was observed that markets themselves will provide either moral or immoral services with equal efficiency. Still, markets affect actions, and their presence or lack affect moral choices -- oftentimes making moral choices easier.

I also came to realize much more clearly (though I understood this in a vague sort of way) that those who wish to abandon the idea of truth are doing so precisely for political reasons -- precisely to make it easier for them to argue against free markets. If they have to acknowledge there is truth, they have to acknowledge the fact that markets are the best provider of freedom, wealth, and other values of any economic system in the world. That is simply a fact. Thus, to undermine markets, you first have to undermine truth.