When Is Voluntary Choice Really Voluntary?

07/24/15 • 47 min

This week Michael C. Munger joins us to talk about voluntary transactions and questions of justice in market pricing.
What would everyone agree is truly voluntary? Are disparities in bargaining power coercive? What’s wrong with using the state to address these disparities? What about price gouging situations? What about sweatshops?
Show Notes and Further Reading
Dr. Munger’s 2010 paper “Euvoluntary or Not, Exchange is Just”.
Dr. Munger’s 2011 paper “‘Euvoluntary Exchange’ and the ‘Difference Principle’”.

Aristotle’s best-known work on ethics, The Nicomachean Ethics.
Harvard professor Michael Sandel’s 2013 book on coercion caused by circumstances, What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets.
James Taylor’s 1979 song about working in a textile mill, “Millworker”.
A recently-rediscovered short essay by John Locke on the morality of price theory, “Venditio”.
Dr. Munger’s new co-edited textbook, Philosophy, Politics, and Economics: An Anthology (2015).

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Previous Episode

What Does It Mean to Think Philosophically?

Philosophy is concerned with three basic questions: “What is there?,” “How do I know about it?,” and “What do I do about it?” The three questions correspond to the fields of metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics.
Our Cato colleague Matthew Feeney joins us this week to talk about philosophy, rhetoric, why people disagree about politics, performative morality, the non-aggression axiom, and more.
Show Notes and Further Reading

Last week’s Free Thoughts Podcast with Andrew I. Cohen on the intersection of philosophy and public policy.

Our Free Thoughts Podcast with Michael Huemer on political authority and ethical intuitionism.

Brink Lindsey’s book, Human Capitalism: How Economic Growth Has Made Us Smarter — and More Unequal (2012).

Jonathan Haidt’s morality quiz at YourMorals.org.

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Next Episode

Going for Broke: Deficits, Debt, and the Entitlement Crisis

With the Greek debt crisis in the news, everyone is asking “Are we the next Greece?” Is our current level of debt sustainable? How about our entitlement programs, like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid?
Michael D. Tanner joins us fresh from the release of his latest book, Going for Broke: Deficits, Debt, and the Entitlement Crisis (2015). Together we discuss whether or not the American government’s profligate spending can be reined in in time.

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