(2004-06-17) Ponnuru Market Morality

Ramesh Ponnuru on the Morality of Market-s. One thing that often trips up these discussions is the lurking idea that if markets are judged to be Moral, the Status Quo is as well. But the one does not follow from the other. When foreign governments keep people in Poverty by denying them customary Property Rights, when licensure regulations (Trade Guild) create barriers to self-advancement for the poor here, when Tariff-s raise the price of children's clothes and block the legitimate aspirations of people in other countries, when HealthCare policies create gratuitous anxieties and tragedies for people: It cannot be said that we have economic Freedom, or justice, or cause for complacency. The two government policies that have done the most to fight poverty in recent years have been, essentially, pro-market policies: Welfare Reform here, and Free Trade overseas. What a Free Market analyis suggests is that our principle must be to widen the circle of productive exchange.