by A few comments on an interesting brief post How the ‘Free Market’ Is Consuming Our Values on a book by Harvard professor Michael Sandel about the encroachment of economic thought to previously non-economic areas of life. Or in my words, it’s the notion that market solutions can be found for just about any problem — we are Homo Economicus. In the Houston Futures Studies program course on Social Change, we’ve identified “Markets” as one of ten principal theories of social change. And historically speaking, it may never have been more “alive and well” than it is now.
Of interest here, is how this plays out going forward and what might be the role of the values changes we’ve been discussing in ConsumerShift. A market orientation fits neatly with the modern values and worldview. The emphasis is on achievement, growth, and competition. These “goals” are well-suited to market approaches. If the goal is to win then it makes sense to set up competitive games to tap that motivation. The market approaches are “means” serving the modern values/worldview “ends.”
In the future, I would suggest that as the “ends” change, the means will as well, thus I suspect our infatuation with market forces will recede over time. The postmodern “ends” of community, sustainability, and wellness will drive a search for different “means” — social entrepreneurship comes to mind (even here still using the language of the market!). Market mechanisms are not likely to work for these means – though they will be tried. For instance, market approaches to sustainability are trotted out there, but I suspect will come to be found wanting. It’s not a fit.
Even though we’ve identified the rise of postmodern values in many places, modern values are still dominant in many more places (including the USA). Thus we see the prevalence of market-based means serving growth ends. It’s a matter of time, I believe, before new means will emerge to catch up with our new ends. Andy Hines
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