A Study of Punishing Moral Actions Producing Potentially Wrong Consequences in the Free Market
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There is a problem about the punishment of potential or future consequences under the principles of the invisible hand and of utility. In the free market, a social pattern and institution, in which the wicked merchants have harmed others and been punished, is obviously evolved at least for protecting individual freedom and security. In the views of Smith and Mill, it is related to the sentiment of justice from sympathy extended by morality of our internal sentiment and sanctions to social lives. In a society or poor country, however, which has never experienced a case such as that of the wicked merchants, a baker, who makes bread with less harmful poison and intends only to satisfy self-interest, can be evaluated as a case of exemplary self-interest by both principles, for example, because he gives the greatest help to solve social hunger. At that moment, we cannot expect any possible evolution of social pattern and institution; and, if another result of his own self-interest is the concentration of poison after a generation, and if the baker is punished, this feature is to reveal a contradiction of the principles of the invisible hand and, in particular, of utility. At the moment, this essay will examine two possible resolutions: the responsibility for the actual and potential consequences, and desert or merit by socially useful behaviour. The former is to regulate certain actions or to examine its propriety and moral rules in the free market and the latter is to have a limit that to calculate future values for returns or merits now is improper as well as injust. By exploring the two alternatives, it might be persuasive that the principle of moral action in the free market be modified in terms of potentially wrong consequences.
Abstract
There is a problem about the punishment of potential or future consequences under the principles of the invisible hand and of utility. In the free market, a social pattern and institution, in which the wicked merchants have harmed others and been punished, is obviously evolved at least for protecting individual freedom and security. In the views of Smith and Mill, it is related to the sentiment of justice from sympathy extended by morality of our internal sentiment and sanctions to social lives. In a society or poor country, however, which has never experienced a case such as that of the wicked merchants, a baker, who makes bread with less harmful poison and intends only to satisfy self-interest, can be evaluated as a case of exemplary self-interest by both principles, for example, because he gives the greatest help to solve social hunger. At that moment, we cannot expect any possible evolution of social pattern and institution; and, if another result of his own self-interest is the concentration of poison after a generation, and if the baker is punished, this feature is to reveal a contradiction of the principles of the invisible hand and, in particular, of utility. At the moment, this essay will examine two possible resolutions: the responsibility for the actual and potential consequences, and desert or merit by socially useful behaviour. The former is to regulate certain actions or to examine its propriety and moral rules in the free market and the latter is to have a limit that to calculate future values for returns or merits now is improper as well as injust. By exploring the two alternatives, it might be persuasive that the principle of moral action in the free market be modified in terms of potentially wrong consequences.
참고문헌 (12)
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