Abstract
Economics is concerned with two main questions:
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1.
The question of how the use of scarce means for given ends can be economized, the economic problem in the narrower sense; and
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2.
The question of the optimal coordination of individual actions that result from the self-interest of acting persons in alternative economic systems and decision processes.
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Literatur
Cf. James M. Buchanan, “Social Choice, Democracy, and Free Markets” and “Individual Choice in Voting and the Market,” Journal of Political Economy, 62 (1954), pp. 114–23 and 334–43.
See also Koslowski, „Markt-und Demokratieversagen?“ Politische Vierteljahresschrift, 24 (1983), pp. 166–87 and “Market and Democracy as Discourses,” in Koslowski, ed. Individual Liberty and Democratic Decision-Making (Tübingen, 1987), pp. 58–92.
Cf. James M. Buchanan, “Rent Seeking and Profit Seeking,” in Buchanan, Robert D. Tollison, and Gordon Tullock, eds., Toward a Theory of the Rent-Seeking Society (College Station. 1980), pp. 3–15.
Cf. Bernard Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees, ed. F. B. Kaye (Oxford. 1924). Vol 1. p. 367: “It is in Morality as it is in Nature. there is nothing so perfectly Good in Creatures that it cannot be hurtful to anyone of the society, nor any thing so entirely Evil, but it may prove beneficial to some part or other of the Creation.” — On Mandeville, see also Koslowski, Gesellschaft und Staat (Stuttgart, 1982), pp. 174–85; and Alois Riklin, Wissenschaft und Ethik (St. Gallen. 1982).
Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra Gentiles, Book III: Providence, trans. Vernon J. Bourke (Notre Dame, Ind., 1975), Chap. 24, Para 8, p. 96: “The better a thing is, the more does it diffuse its goodness to remote beings.”
On Smith’s contradiction of Mandeville, see his critique of Mandeville’s principle in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, ed. E. G. West (Indianapolis, 1976). p. 499: “Virtue is the great support, and vice the great disturber of human society,” but also his agreement: “But how destructive soever this system may appear …, in some respects [it] bordered upon the truth (Ibid, p. 495).
G. E. Moore, Principia Ethica (Cambridge, 1903), pp. 150–55 and John Maynard Keynes. A Treatise on Probability (London, 1973), pp. 309 ff. According to Moore, all actions aimed at the long term require the fundamental presumption that short-term charitable results also translate themselves into charitable consequences in the long term.
John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern, Theory of Games and Economic Behavior. 3rd Ed. (Princeton, 1953), pp. 9–15; and Morgenstern, “Thirteen Critical Points in Contemporary Economic Theory,” in Selected Economic Writings, ed. Andrew Schotter (New York. 1976). pp. 271 ff. and 283 ff., show that the picture of the market as a flexible equilibrium of unlimitedly adaptable individuals is accurate only for market openings and the beginning of market transactions. Once the individuals have determined their preferences and have entered into their exchange-relationships, the free market is transformed into a market with established and rigid relationships and commitments, and, therefore, also with expectations of ethical behavior.
Cf. R. C. O. Matthews, “Morality, Competition, and Efficiency,” The Manchester School of Economic and Social Studies, 49 (1981), p. 294.
Cf. Oliver E. Williamson, “Firms and Markets,” in Sidney Weintraub, ed. Modern Economic Thought (Philadelphia. 1977), pp. 185–202.
Alfred Marshall, Principles of Economics, 8th Ed. (London, 1961), pp. 252–53.
Cf. Horst Albach, „Vertrauen in der ökonomischen Theorie,“ Zeitschrijt für die gesamte Staatswissenschaft, 136 (1980), pp. 2–11.
Robert Axelrod, The Evolution of Cooperation (New York, 1984), pp. 173–74.
Robert Axelrod, The Evolution of Cooperation (New York, 1984) Ibid., p. 20.
Robert Axelrod, The Evolution of Cooperation (New York, 1984) Ibid., p. 128.
On ethics as a corrective for market failure, see Kenneth J. Arrow. “Political and Economic Evaluation of Social Effects and Externalities,” in Michael D. Intriligator. ed. Frontiers of Quantitative Economics (New York, 1975), pp. 3–25.
On the following, see also Koslowski, “Religion, Ökonomie, Ethik,” in Koslowski. ed. Die religiöse Dimension der Gesellschaft (Tübingen, 1984), pp. 76–96.
James M. Buchanan, “Ethical Rules, Expected Values, and Large Numbers,” Ethics. 76 (1965), p. 8.
Amartya Sen, “Isolation, Assurance, and the Social Rate of Discount,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 81 (1967), p. 112.
Sen provides the formal notation in On Economic Inequality (Oxford. 1997), pp. 96–99.
Sen, On Economic Inequality, pp. 98–99.
Georg W. F. Hegel, The Philosophy of Right, trans. S. W. Dyde (Amherst, N. Y. 1996). §§ 135 ff.
Johann Gottfried Herder, Vernunft und Sprache, in Samtliche Werke, ed. B. Suphan (Hildesheim, 1967), Vol. XXI, p. 289.
On this danger of the self-fulfilling prophecy in collective actions, see Mancur Olson, The Logic of Collective Action (Cambridge, Mass., 1965), pp. 105–10.
The concept of small, intennediate, and great transcendences originates with Thomas Luckmann. See his Über die Funktion der Religion,“ in Koslowski, ed., Die religiöse Dimension der Gesellschaft (Tübingen, 1985), pp. 28-29: “The distinction of I-related and I-surpassing experiences is encountered by everyone without great consideration; it is the basis of knowledge about the transcendence of the world. This distinction is based on the universal structure of experience. Each (at the time) present experience has an imaginary core and a horizon of present non-experiencing: The experience-core refers automatically to not yet and no longer experiencing. From this circumstance derives an elementary ‘co-experience’ of transcendence. The distinction of I-relating and I-surpassing in experience and this ‘co-experience’ of transcendence for the experience-matter, out of which for everyone the consciousness of the borders of the everyday life-word form themselves. We can already formulate here a typology of ‘transcendence’ based on the general structure of human experience: 1) If the non-experience shown in present experience is fundamentally just as capable of being experienced as the present experience, we wish to speak of’ small’ transcendences. 2) If the present is fundamentally experienced only indirectly, and never directly, but therefore as a component of the same everyday reality, we wish to speak of ‘intermediate’ transcendences. 3) If something is only grasped at all as reference to another, non-everyday reality, as such not capable of being experienced, we speak of ‘great’ transcendences.”
Cf. Max Weber, “The Social Psychology of the World Religions,” in From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, trans. and ed. 0H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (New York, 1946), p. 268: “The religious determination of life-conduct, however, is also one-note this-only one, of the determinants of the economic ethic.” See also Werner Sombart, The Quintessence of Capitalism. trans. Mortimer Epstein (New York, 1967), pp. 228 ff; Sombart, Der moderne Kapitalismus. 2nd. Ed. (Leipzig, 1916), Vol. II, Part 1, pp. 36 ff; and Heinrich Pesch, Ethik und Volkswirtschaftslehre (Freiburg, 1918), pp. 84 ff.
Cf. Walter Trux and Werner Kirsch, „Strategisches Management oder die Möglichkeit einer ‚wissenschaftlichen ‘Unternehmensführung,“ Die Betriebswirtschaft, 39 (1979). p. 232. n.23.
On the firm as an internal market, see Williamson, “Firms and Markets,” and “The Modern Corporation,” Journal of Economic Literature, 19 (1981), pp. 1537–68.
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Koslowski, P. (2001). Economics, Ethics, and Religion. In: Principles of Ethical Economy. Issues in Business Ethics, vol 17. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-0956-0_2
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