There Are Really Exercises In A Kind

My Goal Is First Of All To Promote A Public Debate About Where Markets Serve The Public Good And Where They Don't Belong. That's My First Goal.

First, Individual Rights Cannot Be Sacrificed For The Sake Of The General Good, And Second, The Principles Of Justice That Specify These Rights Cannot Be Premised On Any Particular Vision Of The Good Life. What Justifies The Rights Is Not That They Maximize The General Welfare Or Otherwise Promote The Good, But Rather That They Comprise A Fair Framework Within Which Individuals And Groups Can Choose Their Own Values And Ends, Consistent With A Similar Liberty For Others.

My Argument Is Not That We Must Never Intervene In Nature. My Argument Is That There Is A Moral Difference Between Intervention For The Sake Of Health, To Cure Or Prevent Disease, And Intervention For The Sake Of Achieving A Competitive Edge For Our Kids In A Consumer Society.

There's No Necessary Connection Between Maximizing Social Utility Or Economic Wealth And Creating A Flourishing Democracy. The First Does Not Guarantee The Second. The Only Way To Create A Flourishing Democracy Is To Find Ways To Reason Together About The Big Questions, Including Hard Questions About Justice And The Common Good, To Reason Together About These Questions So That We As Citizens Can Decide How To Shape The Forces That Govern Our Lives.

Markets Are Useful Instruments For Organizing Productive Activity. But Unless We Want To Let The Market Rewrite The Norms That Govern Social Institutions, We Need A Public Debate About The Moral Limits Of Markets.