Moral Theory exam 3

1. Managers often conceal decisions of vital interest to their workers. Often, they don’t

even give advance notice of firm closures and layoffs. They are free to sacrifice

workers’ dignity in dominating and humiliating their subordinates. Most employer

harassment of workers is perfectly legal, as long as bosses mete it out on an equal-

opportunity basis.

Anderson

1. Americans are used to complaining about how government regulation restricts our

freedom. So we should recognize that such complaints apply, with at least as much

force, to private governments of the workplace. For while the punishments

employers can impose for disobedience aren’t as severe as those available to the

state, the scope of employers’ authority over workers is more sweeping and

exacting, its power more arbitrary and unaccountable

Anderson

1. The history of democracy is the history of turning governance from a private matter

into a public one. It has been about making government public — answerable to the

interests of citizens and not just the interests of their rulers. It’s time to apply the

lessons we have learned from this history to the private government of the

workplace.

Anderson

1. For it is clear that, according to this premise, the more the worker exerts himself in

his work, the more powerful the alien, objective world becomes which he brings into

being over against himself, the poorer he and his inner world become, and the less

they belong to him

Marx

1. Firstly, the fact that labor is external to the worker — i.e., does not belong to his

essential being; that he, therefore, does not confirm himself in his work, but denies

himself, feels miserable and not happy, does not develop free mental and physical

energy, but mortifies his flesh and ruins his mind. Hence, the worker feels himself

only when he is not working; when he is working, he does not feel himself. He is at

home when he is not working, and not at home when he is working.

Marx

1. Political economy conceals the estrangement in the nature of labor by ignoring the

direct relationship between the worker (labor) and production. It is true that labor

produces marvels for the rich, but it produces privation for the worker. It produces

palaces, but hovels for the worker. It produces beauty, but deformity for the worker.

It replaces labour by machines, but it casts some of the workers back into

barbarous forms of labour and turns others into machines.

Marx

1. In a free-enterprise, private-property system, a corporate executive is an employee

of the owners of the business. He has direct responsibility to his employers. That

responsibility is to conduct the business in accordance with their desires, which

generally will be to make as much money as possible while conforming to their

basic rules of the society, both those embodied in law and those embodied in

ethical custom.

Friedman

1. In each of these cases, the corporate executive would be spending someone else's

money for a general social interest. Insofar as his actions in accord with his "social

responsibility" reduce returns to stockholders, he is spending their money. Insofar

as his actions raise the price to customers, he is spending the customers' money.

Insofar as his actions lower the wages of some employees, he is spending their

money.

Friedman

1. This is because I believe the entrepreneurs, not the current investors in a company's

stock, have the right and responsibility to define the purpose of the company. It is

the entrepreneurs who create a company, who bring all the factors of production

together and coordinate it into viable business. It is the entrepreneurs who set the

company strategy and who negotiate the terms of trade with all of the voluntarily

cooperating stakeholders-including the investors.

Mackey

1. The Wealth of Nations was a tremendous achievement, but economists would be

well served to read Smith's other great book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments. There

he explains that human nature isn't just about self-interest. It also includes

sympathy, empathy, friendship, love, and the desire for social approval. As motives

for human behavior, these are at least as important as self-interest. For many

people, they are more important.

Mackey

1. Finally, in trying to settle the question of the relation between profits on the one

hand and goods and services on the other, one might look at business in terms of its

social function and ask why societies have generated and now support and sustain

business.

Camenisch

1. Secondly, this enterprise of assessing business in terms of its contribution to

human flourishing is called for and legitimated by the fact that business in its

various activities is already propagating, whether consciously or not, a view of

humanity and of what human flourishing consequently means, views which of

course assign a major role to the consumption of the goods and services business

produces.

Camenisch

1. The more money can buy, the more affluence—or the lack of it—matters. If the only

advantage of affluence were the ability to afford yachts, sports cars, and fancy

vacations, inequalities of income and wealth would matter less than they do today.

But as money comes to buy more and more, the distribution of income and wealth

looms larger.

Sandel

1. The second reason we should hesitate to put everything up for sale is more difficult

to describe. It is not about inequality and fairness but about the corrosive tendency

of markets. Putting a price on the good things in life can corrupt them. That’s

because markets don’t only allocate goods; they express and promote certain

attitudes toward the goods being exchanged.

Sandel

1. So to decide where the market belongs, and where it should be kept at a distance,

we have to decide how to value the goods in question – health, education, family

life, nature, art, civic duties, and so on. These are moral and political questions, not

merely economic ones. To resolve them, we have to debate, case by case, the

moral meaning of these goods, and the proper way of valuing them.

Sandel

1. In its own way, market reasoning also empties public life of moral argument. Part of

the appeal of markets is that they don’t pass judgment on the preferences they

satisfy. They don’t ask whether some ways of valuing goods are higher, or worthier,

than others… the only question the economist asks is “How much?” Markets don’t

wag fingers. They don’t discriminate between worthy preferences and unworthy

ones.

Sandel