I have already written that economic decisions take place within an ethical framework and that where people agree about relevant ethical values, the economic decisions they make will not generally conflict with those values, even if there are no laws, regulations, or policies preventing it. Conflicts tend to arise between economics and ethics where there is insufficient ethical consensus to prevent, either by understanding, by law, or by social pressure, the economic decisions and activities that cause the conflicts. So if a company thinks it not wrong to market violent toys or video games to children in commercials for Saturday morning cartoons, and if there is insufficient legislative/political opposition to it, it will be done if it proves successful economically. Similarly with any other product or service. In the early history of America, slavery was a contentious issue because it was economical and only offended the ethical sensitivity of part of the population because it had long historical and cultural roots, and was sanctioned in the Bible. 

Moreover, even if there is sufficient consensus to pass laws against certain services or products, if society is split over the issue, a black market or simply an illegal market will operate anyway because sufficient suppliers and customers will be available. Black markets are generally attributed to the power of economic or capitalistic enterprise or to greed, but they only operate where there is insufficient internalized ethical agreement about the wrongness of what is being traded. Those who buy in a black market often do not believe they are doing anything wrong; they believe unreasonable restrictions have been unfairly passed. Even those who sell in a black market may feel the same, and not be operating purely out of greed or for a profit motive.

There are a number of principles, however, which, though they seem ethical and harmless in themselves, give rise to conflicts between ethics and economics, particularly when coupled with certain natural forces. Often this is to the detriment of ethical values and to people's long-range best interests -- sometimes even the willing participants, as in those cigarette smokers who develop addictions and illnesses later in life that make them wish they had never begun to smoke. The principles which give rise to conflicts between ethics and economics are: (1) whatever is legal is free to be pursued for profit by becoming a commercial enterprise, (2) it is better to have more money than less, (3) people may rightfully purchase whatever is legal to purchase and own, and (4) the desired is desirable. These become particularly problematic when coupled with the force of the unconscious desire to be like (certain) others (often portrayed as "keeping up with the Jones"even though "up" is not necessarily the direction), with the force of wanting (some things) just because you don't have them, with the force of youthful impressionability or malleability, and with the force of the increasing rapidity of invention and discovery of all sorts of things which turn out to have unfortunate uses, not anticipated or known in time to have kept in check. 

Individual liberty and autonomy are highly prized in many societies, but the arguments for it require or imply that they will not lead to great or egregious harm. No one, for example, thinks it okay for atomic weapons to be purchased over the counter by teenagers or the average citizen. The risk of large-scale catastrophe overrides the normal benefits and moral right to liberty and autonomy. Autonomy and individual liberty may take precedence over some slight risk to others, but not to catastrophic risks to others, and in some cases not even over catastrophic risks to oneself⁽¹⁾. This can normally be seen on the personal level, for as we rear our children, the rational approach is to give them increasing autonomy as they demonstrate understanding of danger and as they demonstrated a greater sense of responsibility and maturity to avoid it. One does not give a two-year-old carte blanche to play unsupervised in a yard near the street, but a six-year-old who has learned about the danger of being hit by a car might perhaps be allowed to do so. On the other hand, where there is no danger or likely terrible consequences, a two-year-old might reasonably be given certain freedoms, such as choice of play clothes to wear on a given day even if the child might pick a combination of colors or patterns the parent might not have chosen.

Unfortunately some great harms develop incrementally, and many are not generally recognized until it is too late, if they are recognized at all. Also, some activities have different value when they do not affect others from when they do, so that, as I wrote earlier, an action that is perfectly harmless when done by people in a more or less independent society, when done under conditions of relative isolation, or when done by relatively few people, may be harmful to others in a more interdependent society, under less isolated conditions, or when done by more people.

As to the principles and forces above that lead to conflicts, the first and third principles ignore that many things are legal only because no one, or insufficient people, saw the problems with them. Many products and services are legal because no one ever thought anyone would be so foolish or craven enough to do them or to trade in them that laws prohibiting them would be necessary. And many things are legal because they were never anticipated as possible inventions or activities. While new foods and drugs are illegal until approved, most inventions or discoveries or new sports or other activities are not illegal until proven safe and reasonable; they are legal unless and until they are specifically prohibited by law because enough legislators care that they have been found to be unsafe or otherwise undesirable. However, in many cases it takes time for products or services to be discovered to be unsafe or undesirable, and, by then, often it is difficult to outlaw what has become popular, particularly if profitable and wealthy interested parties have a stake in their continued commercial availability.

Of course, something's being legal to purchase does not mean it is right for just any person to purchase it. For example, the fact that anyone can purchase an automobile that is dangerous for them to drive because it is beyond their particular level of driving skill or maturity, does not mean it is right or reasonable, or even smart, to purchase such a vehicle. Or the fact that it is legal for a manufacturer to make and sell something quite profitably which s/he knows to be dangerous does not mean it is right for them to do so. Having a legal right to do something does not mean it is right (in all other ways) to do it. There may be moral grounds not to do it; there may be pragmatic grounds not to do it; there may be other prudential grounds not to do it. However, people, particularly young people, do not always do the wisest things, and companies interested in bottom-line profits are often reluctant to place prudence and morality above (potential) profit.

Next, the principle that more money is better than less is only true where money is neither pursued nor accrued to the detriment of other values, such as health, sufficient leisure, self-actualization, wisdom, the understanding and appreciation of other higher or nobler pursuits, civility, loving relationships, etc., etc. But it is very easy to forget unconsciously that money is not the most important thing in life when society, especially the media, tends to note success more in terms of money and the influence and power of money than anything else. And, as I noted previously, the pursuit of money will even make many people willingly give up many personal liberties and autonomy in order to be financially successful in an organization that is relatively authoritarian and narrow-minded. Those people will think nothing of giving up a liberty or other important things for the pursuit of private enterprise that they would never assent to give up if the government or anyone else required or requested. People will do things for money they would never do for any other reason, even if there are other ways they could make the money, and even if they don't need the money. The pursuit of money becomes a powerful personal and social influence when the purpose of having money is not kept in focus, and when other values are not kept in perspective. 

In Western culture, that perspective is not always kept. It is that reason, along with these other influences, that make some non-capitalist countries fear and resent capitalism, because they reasonably see the value of profit and earnings likely to encroach upon and take precedence, at least unconsciously, over religious or other values they hold to be, often rightfully, far more important. Even in capitalist countries many people lament the erosion of particular values though they do not necessarily see that capitalism or free enterprise - when pursued simply for monetary benefit- played a contributing factor. And even when they do see it, they usually cannot quite see how to prevent it without giving up free enterprise and the pursuit of money as a value that they consider important and necessary.

My own surmise is that what tends to happen in a free enterprise system and (any part of) society where basic needs of food, health, shelter, clothing, etc. are fairly well provided for, where there is not a strong ethical consensus, and where ethics (as reflective moral philosophy) is not taught or modeled in the media, principle (4) above -the desired is the desirable- in league with the other principles, allows markets to pander to low or base desires which are not illegal. Once basic needs are met, the most easily satisfied pleasures tend to become the ones most readily pursued and most readily served - these are normally the pleasures of the body, the senses, the immediate pleasures of the mind, and the immediate pleasures of group acceptance or esteem (often predicated on fad or fashion) rather than those pleasures of the mind which require cultivation⁽²⁾. Often, but not always, they are the lower or more base pleasures. As long as markets are set up to serve any legal desire, great resources will be used to cultivate and cater to or even pander to these pleasures. Couple that with the peer pressure to emulate those who start trends or who seem to be having more fun, particularly among young people without already well-developed values or interests, and you have a recipe for the lack of pursuit of that which is neither immediately pleasurable nor obviously important. And if there are no forces at work modeling and presenting the importance, use, and pleasure of those values which are more difficult to achieve, people will tend to pursue them less and less, and businesses which provide them will become less numerous and less important. John Stuart Mill perhaps said it best in Utilitarianism when he wrote: "Capacity for the nobler feelings is in most natures a very tender plant, easily killed, not only by hostile influences, but by mere want of sustenance; and in the majority of young persons it speedily dies away if the occupations to which their position has devoted them, and the society into which it has thrown them, are not favorable to keeping that higher capacity in exercise. Men lose their high aspirations as they lose their intellectual tastes, because they have not time or opportunity for indulging them; and they addict themselves to inferior pleasures, not because they deliberately prefer them, but because they are either the only ones to which they have access or the only ones which they are any longer capable of enjoying. It may be questioned whether anyone who has remained equally susceptible to both classes of pleasures ever knowing and calmly preferred the lower, though many, in all ages, have broken down in an ineffectual attempt to combine both."

It is not either capitalism or free-enterprise by itself, however, that causes the erosion of values nor the addiction to inferior values; it is free enterprise coupled with the forces and other principles above in any society where there is the absence of reasonable and homogeneously accepted higher values and an absence of a successful way of imparting those values to the next generation⁽³⁾. It is compounded by an over-generalization, common to youth, about the lack of need for all traditional values in a given society from the evidence that some socially accepted values actually are outdated or were bad values to begin with, causing the dismissal of truly important social values with the bad ones. This is the proverbial throwing out of the baby with the bath water.

For example, one sees wedding directors who become so dictatorial and dedicated to the ceremonial aspects of weddings that, in the name of efficiency, they make the event unenjoyable for the couple, the families, and the guests they are supposed to be serving. They may feel they are doing the right thing for everyone or they may just be trying to make the pastor's work easier because he is their real boss. I have seen wedding directors keep a long line of people outside in the heat because they wanted everyone to sign the wedding book before they entered the sanctuary of a church with a small foyer. I have seen them dismiss the reasonable requests of brides and their mothers just because "that is not way we do that here." 

Or one sees news reporters intrude in the most obnoxious and disrespectful ways on people's privacy at times of great loss and grief, just to get something they can put on camera. Or manufacturers will order engineers to design products more for profit than for safety; and the engineers will comply. One sees school district administrators and employees dismiss the educational and logistical wishes of parents, not because they have legitimate arguments that the parents want something bad or harmful for their children, but because they are the "professionals" who therefore know what is best for all children and because they are the only ones who understand the institutional "needs of the schools." One school board member one time said that they could remedy a typical kind of school administratively-created problem -which he appreciated to be a serious problem- if only a few students were affected by it, but not if a lot of kids were affected (because that would essentially involve having to change a policy or a traditional approach that caused the problem). Presumably if he ran a restaurant he would meet the requests of a few customers who wanted something not on the menu, but if all his customers always wanted that food, none of them would be served because that would require a menu change....

The catastrophe of the Challenger space shuttle would have been avoided if the administrators of the company responsible for the rocket engines had simply heeded the engineers' request to delay the launch until temperatures increased later in the day to avoid the possibility of the kind of explosion that happened, instead of being afraid such a delay would make them look bad. They were so worried about looking bad over a delay and the voluntary admission of a problem with their design or materials, that they stupidly chose the sad and immoral option which ultimately made them look a million times worse because it was so deadly and so egregious. 

Kermit Vandivier chronicles a case in the third edition of Ethical Issues in Business: a Philosophical Approach (edited by Thomas Donaldson and Patricia H. Werhane, published by Prentice Hall), in which the B.F. Goodrich company falsified tests for an extremely faulty brake design they had won a government contract to produce - as though they thought no one would ever find out the brakes would likely disintegrate on trying to land and stop the planes they were on. The company fired the employee who reported the fraud and promoted the workers who tried to perpetrate it. They were the "loyal employees" and the "good workers."

Obviously having the work ethic in sense (1) above is a good thing. Having a work ethic in sense (2) is not necessarily a good thing.

But again, it is neither capitalism nor free enterprise itself which is corrupting in sense (2). It is free enterprise left to its own devices in a moral vacuum, or at least in the absence of the kind of moral values necessary to override the natural desire to keep a job, or require someone else labor, regardless of the non-monetary costs or burdens.

1. If an adult is so despondent over a temporary career or personal relationship setback that s/he is seriously contemplating suicide, most people would agree that some sort of intervention is more important than allowing autonomy at that time in that situation. Or similarly, emergency room physicians are often begged by people brought in suffering great pain from a serious injury to be allowed to let die; but they generally ignore the plea, and the accident victim after recovering is normally grateful they did.  (Return to text.)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

2. People will cultivate activities that require substantial work to achieve the level of skill that makes them enjoyable, but they seem to need an internal incentive or strong external motivation. Or the work required for mastery must, in itself, be either pleasurable or stimulating in some way. Further, I believe the work normally has to be sufficiently obviously incrementally helpful toward improvement that it appears to be worth the effort to the person doing it. I believe one of the reasons (along with the peer incentive to be interested in them) video games, and, sometimes, sports, are so popular is that, while they are very difficult at first, they nevertheless are easy to improve at each time one plays them. Playing them yields the satisfaction of obvious improvement and the promise or expectation of eventual mastery. Even when that is an illusion, it is a strong motivating factor. Golf as a hobby, for example, has been said to be a triumph of hope over experience. A typical response by players when one makes an exceptionally good shot is "That will bring you back to play tomorrow."  (Return to text.)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

3. One of the primary concerns of people in non-capitalist societies about free market capitalism (especially when coupled with elements of social freedom and democracy) is that the young will be corrupted -- that they will be lured away from important beliefs and practices by the availability of those goods and services which promise immediate satisfaction, even if in the long run they are ultimately less satisfying, less beneficial, or less stabilizing. Adults in those societies are less likely feared to be corrupted in this way because they will have seen the benefits, where they exist, of their traditional values, and because they are more 'set in their ways'.  (Return to text.)