Part 5 The Moral Dimensions of the Market Economy
Today we find ourselves in an interconnected global world of big business and big government not foreseen by America’s Founders. And yet moral dimensions of markets and government are as relevant as ever, even as there are concerns that the components of a good life and true happiness are being lost in the quest for efficiency and material betterment. Are efforts to improve peoples’ lives merely technocratic questions? In this final part of the “Economics and the Pursuit of Happiness” course, thinkers ranging from Adam Smith Milton Friedman to Thomas Piketty to Tyler Cowen provide insight into the ways in which moral concerns must not only be acknowledged in the economic sphere, but rightly understood if true economic justice, freedom, and prosperity are to be secured.