It depends.
Free markets corrode some aspects of character while enhancing others. Whether the result is good, on balance, depends on how one envisions a good life. Much also depends on whether one believes other economic systems can do better. The question can only be answered by comparing realistic alternatives and by understanding how different systems promote divergent types of human character.
It is important to avoid thinking in terms of ideal models. In recent years there has been a tendency to think that free markets emerge spontaneously when state interference in the economy is removed. But free markets are not simply the absence of government. Markets depend on systems of law to decide what can be traded as a commodity and what cannot. Slavery is forbidden in modern market economies; so are blackmail and child pornography. Free markets always involve some moral constraints of this sort, which are policed by governments...
CONTINUED ONLINE.
John Gray is emeritus professor at the London School of Economics. Among his recent books are False Dawn: The Delusions of Global Capitalism (Granta) and Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia (Penguin).
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