Two economists go looking for virtues in markets. What is there to be found besides greed? More than expected – and some of it democracy could use too.
The classifieds site Kleinanzeigen has become a fixture in many people’s lives. Selling shoes that turned out too big, picking up a retro piece of furniture for the living room, or getting rid of the old bicycle in the basement – all of it takes a few clicks. On this platform, the heiress from the suburban villa who wants to shed her surplus treasures meets the student furnishing his first apartment on a shoestring. After a few messages, strangers become business partners. If the price and the goods are right, both walk away from the deal with a smile.
Behind everyday transactions like these there is often more than mere capitalist enrichment. They work only because people show virtues: the buyer respects the seller’s property and accepts that he can acquire it only at a fair price, one the seller agrees to. At the same time he trusts that the piece of furniture has no hidden defects he might overlook in a brief inspection. And it falls to the seller to build trust by pointing openly to possible weak spots and allowing a thorough inspection. Without this interplay of respect and trust, a simple exchange would hardly be possible.
In these markets, citizens build up trust in and respect for one another. Here a culture arises with the virtues we need for a working democracy. The “poor” student can profit from the “rich” homeowner – and vice versa. They do not merely trade with one another; they get talking, exchange a few words, and meet as members of the same community.
Variety Instead of Displacement
The culture of democracy arises not only on Kleinanzeigen but elsewhere too, in the brewery for instance. Corporation or small operation: whoever wants to survive has to listen to the customers. Hardly any brewery would have hit on the idea of brewing alcohol-free beer of its own accord. More than a few brewers turned up their noses at first. For them, “without alcohol it isn’t real beer.” But the market pushes them to put themselves in their customers’ shoes and to find out what they want. Whoever ignores those preferences risks being displaced. Respect for other people’s tastes thus becomes a lived virtue.
Butchers have fared similarly. Here too, demand for vegetarian or vegan alternatives forces many businesses to offer products they long scoffed at or outright rejected. Some butchers, proud of their meat for generations, today sell tofu patties or plant-based cold cuts. What lies behind this is at times not conviction but pressure from customers.
In the end, neither “real” beer nor “real” meat disappears; the range widens instead. An insight like this can ease fears, for example the worry that alternatives will displace the traditional craft of brewing or butchering. Often the very opposite happens: Rügenwalder Mühle, whose meat substitutes now account for the bulk of its revenue, shows it clearly. And with beer the trend has held: over the past ten years, production of alcohol-free varieties in Germany has more than doubled. Whoever respects other people’s tastes in the market thereby also preserves the basis of their own success.
This virtue extends to the neighborhood barbecue: there, one person lays her vegan steak on the grill while another has a juicy beef steak sizzling. For one, an alcohol-free beer goes without saying; for another, only the “real” one with alcohol will do. For the party to succeed, everyone has to put up, to a degree, with the others having different preferences – and at the same time trust that their own choice will not be mocked, belittled, or even prevented.
For what fails at the barbecue cannot be expected to work in democracy at large. At times compromises have to be accepted through gritted teeth, and radical ideas fade in the struggle over coalitions. What is needed are solutions that do not let one side triumph but do justice to everyone to some degree. That can succeed only if the menu allows variety: from the vegan plate to the traditional roast, from alcohol-free beer to bitter pilsner. What matters is that no dividing “or” is needed, and that a connecting “and” is sought instead.
Initiative Instead of Resentment
Among the virtues we practice in the world of work and carry into democracy is putting up with whatever small injustices may come our way. At the office, the promotion goes to a colleague and not to me. At first a flicker of envy may stir, but in a second step a brief pause pays off: did she in the end achieve more than I did? Did she take on the more important projects? Did she show abilities I still have to develop? The first impulse can deceive, and the colleague has in fact earned her promotion.
In our democracy we hold intense debates about inequalities, lavish inheritances, or oversized SUVs. All of these are questions that have their place in a democracy – but they must not be driven by resentment. Here too, a pause pays off: does the neighbor earn more because he took on training or a risk that I avoided? Did the aunt not deliberately forgo a great deal in order to leave something to her children? And is the much-maligned SUV not, in the end, a hybrid that uses less fuel than my own compact?
The small flicker of envy can even be a prompt to question one’s own behavior. It may even lead one to ask the colleague about her path to promotion and to learn from her experience. At the same time, conversations like these often give rise to a culture of working together in which successes are seen not as a threat but as inspiration.
But in the face of real injustices too, initiative is called for. If the promotion really did pass me by for no comprehensible reason, then the thing to do is to talk to my manager and demand clarity. If the answers stay evasive, the works council can be a place to turn. And if it turns out that recognition and prospects are fundamentally lacking, then changing jobs is, finally, a self-assured form of initiative as well.
In democracy this process is harder, because the principle of initiative is bound to the rules of collective decision-making. Concerns have to be articulated, fed into the political process, and legitimated by majorities. Yet here too initiative is indispensable: whoever perceives injustices can get involved, contribute arguments, and forge alliances. What we practice on a small scale, in the world of work and the economy, is on a large scale the precondition of a thriving democracy.
Markets Are More Than Greed
These virtues are no accidental by-product of the examples given; the economists Luigino Bruni and Robert Sugden have described them systematically. In their essay Reclaiming Virtue Ethics for Economics, they show that markets rest not on greed alone but on a web of “market virtues” such as trust, respect, equanimity toward others’ successes, or the search for mutual advantage.
These virtues prove themselves on Kleinanzeigen, at the neighborhood barbecue, or in the missed promotion. A more recent study by US economists, The morality of markets in theory and empirics, backs up these anecdotes by showing that people in market economies more often display prosocial behavior, that is, act more virtuously. So it becomes clear: we must not fail to recognize the market’s quiet contribution to a thriving democracy. It creates the culture that political coexistence needs too.
