Beyond Wealth Maximization
Law, Economic Power, and Human Flourishing
Can an economy be successful at creating wealth while failing in its obligations to human beings?
Welcome to my website and this first newsletter. I invite you to consider a question that will guide our discussion: what makes economic power morally legitimate?
Capitalism offers a powerful promise. Through private enterprise, competition, and voluntary exchange, people can pursue their purposes and improve their circumstances. Milton Friedman gave this promise a philosophical defense: economic freedom matters in itself, and competitive capitalism can help protect political freedom by dispersing power beyond the state.1
That argument deserves serious consideration. Government can become coercive, and individual choice should not be casually displaced by official judgment. But the defense of economic freedom also raises a difficult question: how free is a choice when refusing it threatens a person’s livelihood?
Immanuel Kant provides a moral standard for examining this problem. His principle requires us to treat humanity, in ourselves and others, always as an end and never merely as a means.2 Applied to economic relationships, this means that people cannot be valued solely for the profits they generate, the labor they supply, or the purchases they make.
Kant’s principle does not automatically condemn markets. Cooperation routinely involves people helping one another accomplish their purposes. The moral issue is whether those relationships also respect each participant’s dignity and agency.
Consider someone who accepts unfavorable employment because no realistic alternative is available. The agreement may benefit both worker and employer. Yet mutual benefit does not settle whether the conditions are fair or whether the power exercised within the relationship is justified.
Here the debate becomes clear. Friedman asks how markets can protect individuals from coercive authority. A Kantian examination asks whether economic relationships respect persons even when they are formally voluntary. These questions belong together: public power and private power both require moral scrutiny.
Profitability tells us something about financial success under existing rules. It does not tell us everything about whether those rules deserve our support. Nor does government intervention become just merely because it promises protection.
My starting proposition is that economic institutions should be judged by how they serve people whose worth is independent of their market value. Wealth matters because it can support human life and freedom. It cannot, by itself, establish how human beings ought to be treated.
This newsletter begins an inquiry into the relationship between capitalism, law, and morality. I welcome disagreement grounded in careful argument. The question I leave with you is this:
What must an economic system guarantee before we can call the freedom it offers meaningful?