About this book

The premise of this book is that the market should be judged by the satisfactions people receive as a consequence of their market experiences and by what they learn from them. I would substitute these criteria for the current criterion: efficiency in producing and distributing goods and services. That is, goods and services – and the income that purchases them – are only intermediate goods, whereas satisfaction or happiness and human development are final goods. I believe that the argument and evidence in the book are a challenge not only to market institutions but also to market economics and to the humanist and socialist critiques of markets.

The challenge is a fundamental one, for if the analysis is accurate it changes the very axis of debate that has dominated most of the twentieth century. That debate has dealt substantially with the relative merits of capitalist and socialist economies, the relative merits of markets and states in governing economies, and the best ways to achieve economic welfare. Although it may be that the capitalist–socialist argument is now moot, the arguments over the relative merits of markets and states and over the best ways to achieve economic welfare continue unabated. In this debate human development has hardly been seriously considered as a market purpose (in spite of brief acknowledgments by Marshall, Pigou, and others – to be discussed) and and has not been seriously investigated at all.

In contrast, I propose a wholly different debate, one that has a dual focus.