The Vices of Economic Efficiency: Acquisitiveness, Greed and Self-Indulgence. Assessing Mainstream Economic Theory in the Light of Aristotelian Virtue Ethics.

Abstract

I argue that the typical description and thus also the evaluation of the human activities of acquiring and exchanging product and services, found in mainstream economic textbooks, is inadequate from the perspective of Aristotelian virtue ethics. By tracing the roots of the modern science of economics back to the enlightenment and the built-in mechanisms of the market allegedly discovered by thinkers like Adam Smith, I emphasize the non-altruistic aspect of this kind of economic agency. Then I lay out the basic principle of microeconomics based on a typical but comprehensive academic textbook. I show how the value of commodities and the success of economic activity is measured merely by looking at prices and overall consumption. Most economists identify preference satisfaction, which they measure through people’s willingness to pay, as well-being. The conceptualization of market exchange in mainstream economics involves a clear separation of a person’s benefit from the value of the action in itself and the good of others. The only concern of the economic agents is the result that transactions have on their wealth, assuming that they always prefer more money, product and services rather than less. Aristotle’s theory of action and human flourishing, on the other hand, integrates economic activity in such a way that it can’t be separated from ethical concerns. And his account of the limitedness of natural wealthacquisition and of the virtues provide a way of determining when commerce and profitmaximisation come in conflict with the pursuit of happiness (eudaimonia). I claim that in mainstream economics, people’s failure to act in accordance with virtue, for example by acquiring or consuming to much, is often considered to be beneficial for them based on the assumption that their preference is being satisfied. In addition people will be pushed, in different degrees, to serve other people’s acquisitiveness, greed and self-indulgence; both because of necessity and what firms may demand from their employees.