Wednesday, September 3, 2014

Supply, Demand, Justice

A 'just' exchange consists in at least three conditions obtaining for each of the parties involved: 1. Transparency; 2. Voluntariness; and 3. Equity for each between a) the value of the given item, and b) the value of the recieved item.  So, among the ways that an exchange is not 'just' are, correspondingly, it involves an obscured fact, one of the parties is acting under duress, or, one of the parties exerts themselves more than the other.  Now, whether or not Supply-Demand Equilibrium can be characterized as 'just' is unclear.  For, while an exchange between two parties can be conceived as achieving SDE, and, if all three conditions are met, the SDE is 'just', Market Value is determined by factors that far exceed the parameters of an exchange between two parties.  So, in that case, not only is the satisfaction of all three conditions problematic, it is unclear that the model of a just exchange can even be applied to scenarios determined by Market Value.  Thus, the inference, implicit in Capitalism since Smith, and common in the popular imagination, from SDE to Justice, i. e. to the influence of the 'invisible hand of the market', is questionable, at the very least.

No comments:

Post a Comment