Does market economy have any place for poor people and for human values - love, sacrifice, morality,character?

[sunil]

It appears that Market Economy is guided by profit and it does't care for human values. Rich gets richer and poor get poorer. Society is divided in two parts one those have all the things and two those who have nothing. When it comes to profit the honesty, morality, character and values part away. Is it not the dark side of the market economy. Shouldn't we evolve an economy which is best suited for our values system and our social set-up and not just follow the western systems blindly? Moreover, Is the market-economy not detrimental to our environment, nature and eco-system?

[SDD]

Acting in your self interest within free markets is the most human of values, and it is the basis for the only market structure in history that has created enormous amounts of prosperity for participants. Every other economic scheme has crashed and burned; yet you'd like to try some of those again?

[John Wayne]

Would you please get off the liberal agenda here and begin thinking these things through? Are you suggesting that income equality, resulting from moving wealth from the productive to the non-productive is in the best interests of this nation? (By the way, I think you mean to say "free-market economy"). As SDD stated, free enterprise and the ability to earn virtually unllimited profits allows for the growth of our economy, improved states of infrastructure, further job opportunities for the lower class, and the incentive to invent, create, and produce. This leads to advancements in technology, medicine, and any other field imaginable that keeps the people in this country living a "humane" day to day life. I would much rather have a system where perhaps 1 in 100 capitalists have immoral and greedy intentions that can be dealt with by the Justice System, than having a highly regulated market in which there are no freedoms, no production, and thus no "greed." As far as your argument concerning economic growth and the environment, scientists are by no means in agreement that human pollution is a big enough contributor to result in "detrimental" effects to the environment. Growth is inevitably going to result in the development of land, and no matter what type of economy is in place, this will occur. A state run economy would do no better, I assure you, in protecting the environment. I urge you to analyze the current situations in North Korea and China.

[Eric]

The fact of the matter is that the we have no better way of resource allocation that the market. The basis of markets is underpinned by the concept of utility maximisation. The markets are reflecting values system and our social setup. The problem is not the market, the market is great. The problem is us. Our greed, the things we want and how much we are willing to compete for them. It is not perfect, it never will be in the absence of perfect information, but it is the best thing that we have. The detriment to the environment is why people are trying to produce things like carbon emissions trading schemes so that these negative externalities can be priced.

I also think it is a little harsh to generalise every profit seeking business as bereft of honesty morality and character.

[rdappa]

Adam Smith agreed with you, kind of. He considered free markets as a way of morality and human value.

As far as the rich and poor thing, it's all a matter of mathematics. If a rich person invests 100k at 10%, he will earn 10k with a total of 110k. If a poor person invests 1k at 10% (same earning potential), he will earn only 100 bucks with a total of 1100 bucks. Math tells us why the rich get richer and the poor can actually improve just as much! We really can't do anything socially than what we already have...

The free market system teaches us that each individual can improve his situation by using his own self as the idea machine. Every other system of economics teaches that the money you have has to come from someone else. I, myself, would rather have the risk of failure than the chance for growth of nothing!

The market economy has evolved, we didn't even care about the environment 100 years ago! People have come around a long ways if you look at it correctly. If you believe that there exists some state of symbiosis, you are kidding yourself that it doesn't already exist. Free markets are a state of symbiosis!

If you want an economic system based on the majority of peoples values in the world, then the rule of the jungle is your pick. Lets look at human trafficking in India or genocide in Africa and starvation in China. These are the evils not of free markets, but ones that have been going on for centuries. We would fall into such a matter too if it were not for the freedom to do something different.