Walter Block on morality vs. the marketplace

This book does not claim that the marketplace is a moral economic institution.  True, the profit and loss business system has brought mankind a plethora of consumer goods and services unkown in the entire history of the world.  These benefits are the envy of all peoples not fortunate enough to live under its banner.  Given the tastes, desires, preferences of the ultimate consumer, the market is the best means known to man for providing for his satisfaction.

But the marketplace also produces goods and services – such as gambling, prostitution, pornography, drugs (heroin, cocaine, etc.) alcohol, cigarettes, swinger’s clubs, suicide abetment – whose moral status is, to say the least, highly questionable and in many cases highly immoral. The free enterprise system, thus, cannot be considered a moral one. Rather, as a means of consumer satisfaction, it can only be as moral as are the goals of the market participants themselves. Since these vary widely, all the way from the completely depraved and immoral to the entirely legitimate, the market must be seen as amoral – neither moral nor immoral.

The market in other words is like fire, or a gun, or a knife or a typewriter: a splendidly efficient means towards both good and bad ends.  Through free enterprise we are capable of achieving virtuous actions, but also their very opposite as well.

How, then, can we defend the immoral activitys of some market actors?  This stems from the philosophy of libertarianism, which is limited to analyzing one single problem.  It asks, under what conditions is violence justified?  And it answers, violence is justified only for purposes of defense, or in response to prior aggression, or in retaliation against it.  This means, among other things, that government is not justified in fining, punishing, incarcerating, imposing death penalties on people who act in an immoral manner - as long as they refrain from threatening or initiating physical violence on the persons or property of others.  Libertarianism, then, is not a philosophy of life.  It does not presume to indicate how mankind may best live.  It does not set out the boundaries between the good and the bad, between the moral and the immoral, between propriety and impropriety.

The defense of such as the prostitute, pornographer, etc., is thus a very limited one.  It consists solely of the claim that they do not initiate physical violence against non-aggressors.  Hence, according to libertarian principles, none should be visited upon them.  This means only that theses activities should not be punished by jail sentences or other forms of violence.  It decidedly does not mean that these activities are moral, proper or good.

~ Walter Block, Defending the Undefendable, introduction