markets and morals

It is demeaning to history (I'm leaving humans out of it.

If humans aren't even deemed to be beyond "demeaning," why can't they be bought and sold, redeemed at face value? What strange cardinalities. (If human dignity is lower than "history," then humans' lives should be tradeable for this higher-valued "history" - that's what nationalism or any appeal to "Destiny" does.)

Seriously, my argument is simply that economics and ethics go hand in hand -- abolition of slavery closely followed GDP per capita in the industrial revolution ... England (1772), Scotland (1776), France (1790's), Holland (1804?), North US (1804ish), Argentina (1813), British Empire (1830's), Russia (1861), South US (1865), Brazil (1888), etc. What is also curious is that 'humanist' arguments came mostly as rationalizations for facts long on the ground. The American and English abolitionists we remember today (Anti-Slavery Society, Buxton in England; John Brown, Harriet Stowe, Emerson were US Northerners) grew up in an economic system that had already outgrown and outlawed slavery at least a generation before. The must have sounded like a "Classic Rock" station to their immediate communities.

The economic/moral dualness ... that which is tradeable is by definition morally acceptable, and vice versa, that which a society deems sacred or completely immoral is given a value of infinity or zero (in either case, non-tradeable and external to the market). Market externalities define moral boundaries.

A quick survey of moral issues reveals this.

• usury/interest ... financial instruments/derivatives are worth something, rather than being restricted to God's market/Lady Luck
• slavery abolition ... human dignity is unsellable
• intermarriage (racial, class, caste) ... who can/cannot engage in the mating market
• The Beatles selling "Revolution" to a Nike commercial ... the baby-boomers have commoditized their priceless youth
• abortion ... the value of a call option
• cigarette sales to youngsters ... the innocence of children is untradeable
• gay lifestyle & marriage ... who is, or is not able, to engage in mating contracts (as well as the contract between a couple and the rest of their community)
• kidney markets ... "body integrity is not worth an infinite amount, therefore parts are tradeable"
• polygamy ... portfolio diversification vs. the indivisible, sacred value of love
• health care ... should private clinics/insurance be allowed to sell goods?
• recreational drugs ... a sellable drug is a morally acceptable one
• child pornography ... childish innocence, again, deemed untradeable
• farm subsidies ... "a country should be self sufficient in its food production and/or agricultural products (eg, in France) define a self-identity worth paying for"
• energy independence ... "A country is morally obligated to free itself from the free market"
• animal rights/vegetarianism ... "human desire has another limit - an animal's dignity"
• open source software ... a revolt against commercialization ("my creativity is worth so much, it is unsellable - I will give it away for free")
• smoking bans & trans-fat prohibition ... more barriers in public markets

KayJay makes my point however - trading in humans is so beyond his value system that he cannot even fathom a need for anything beyond a moral validation. He finds economic arguments against slavery themselves debasing (this type of 'derivative trading' is immoral): it's an insult to think an anti-slavery opinion can't be bought with just the infinite value of a 'freedom'/human rights argument.