5. Markets Are Moral Spaces

This chapter argues that markets function better when participants are virtuous, although markets could function without especially virtuous actors. Additionally, we show that market participants tend to be virtuous. Deirdre McCloskey has forcefully and convincingly made the same point that markets are compatible with and depend on virtuous behavior. The bourgeois virtues are both bourgeois (i.e. born of markets) and virtuous (i.e. exhibiting the very virtues we have long admired). Beyond exhibiting the seven virtues that McCloskey highlighted (love, faith, hope, courage, temperance, prudence, and justice), we show that people in market societies tend to be more altruistic, are less likely to be materialistic and corrupt, and are more likely to be cosmopolitan as well as trusting and trustworthy.