Love and Market

Critics to Economic Market SystemGreediness, Reason and Love

Misery remains in large regions of the world. Conflicts spread all over the world. Our planet is ecologically at a critical point…

There are many explanations for such a situation, of course. We can be rather vague – and yet touch the truth – and say that the problems of our societies are rooted in our ways of behaving and thinking. Or we can be controversial and blame the market laws, or, in other words, the rules that drive our economic systems and societies.

And that’s what Schumacher, an important economist and ecologist of the twentieth century, has defended. To him, «a man pushed by greediness and envy» - which is what is happening in the framework of economic liberalism - «looses his faculty of seeing things as they really are, or of seeing them in their proportions and in the whole, and his successes may turn into a fiasco».

Our environmental problems are a major example of the result of the functioning of market rules. Global warming and huge climate changes are menacing billions of people, and are a direct emanation of man’s greed and of the short term view and interests associated with market rules.

In an epoch where the mermaid chant of liberalism is largely dominant, it’s important to meditate on the words of the critics of that system. They may contain some utopia, or some disagreement with the near world, but they help us to be more critical.

Economics may have constraints and rules. The market can’t be abolished, and can be a powerful mechanism of development. But we must correct it and oppose its evil sides. Love – in its diverse forms: love to others, to the earth, to high cultural standards… and reason, also have an important word in our societies and economics. We can’t leave the market so free of rules as the hard line liberals pretend.