Can the free market give you moral backbone?

The John Templeton Foundation recently sent me a collection of essays addressing the question: “Does the free market corrode moral character?” Lacking an agreed definition of the free market, a conception of good moral character, and above all a sense of how character is shaped, it is not surprising that the answers tended to wander off topic. The writer Kay Hymowitz fears that internet chatrooms facilitate paedophilia. The economist Jagdish Bhagwati argues that globalisation makes the world a better place. However right he may be, that was not the question.

It is easy to point to systems that are far more injurious to moral character – not to mention prosperity, peace, the environment and human life itself – than the free market: German fascism, Stalinist communism. It is harder to reverse the exercise, although free markets do look corrosive when compared to some childlike state of grace.