02 Oct Free Market and Ethical Issues choice
36147What not to do:
I have students who seem determined to turn this into a paper about how free markets don’t work. But note what the assignment says: “Describe how free market features could be introduced to help alleviate the social problem through free market operations of supply and demand.” I have read papers in which the entire discussion was about how terrible it would be if we applied free market principles to social problem X. That’s pretty much the opposite of what is required. If you think that features of a free market will make things worse for your chosen social problem, maybe you should choose another topic.
Some students have written about sex trafficking or human trafficking lately, which is a problem people have become attuned to in recent years. For several reasons, I have seen a lot of confusion where students choose this as a topic, and frankly, it’s probably best that you choose something else. Less common are papers about abortion. This, too, is one of those areas where student papers tend to get tied in knots philosophically, and I urge you to avoid that topic as well. Also, a few students have written about problems with administering some government program, like welfare programs. But welfare programs are not a “market.” Welfare recipients are not being traded as a good or service. So that’s not a good fit for this assignment either.
In this Assignment, you will write a research paper about social problems where the free markets are not allowed to function, which includes the market for a particular illegal good and service, a regulated market, etc.
For the Unit 1 assignment, here are the instructions. Full details are available when you click on the orange “Unit 1” bar on the menu to the left. I have had students not follow these instructions carefully, so I want to emphasize a few things.
You can write your research about social problems where the free markets are not allowed to function, which includes the market for a particular illegal good and service, a regulated market, etc.
Select a social problem where free markets are not allowed to function, and conduct research on the social problem.
Describe how free market features could be introduced to help alleviate the social problem through free market operations of supply and demand.
Discuss the risks of introducing market mechanisms of supply and demand in situations where ethical issues are present.
The key problem, I think, is that students sometimes don’t know what free markets are. I have had students write papers on how medical care isn’t a free market because we have to pay for medical care. But “free market” does not mean that the good or service is provided for free. Free markets are markets that operate without government intervention. Nearly every market–for better or worse–has some government intervention, so it’s a matter of degree, really. So you’re supposed to write about a social problem resulting from a government intervention, basically. For example, you could write about social problems resulting from:
drug prohibition and the “war on drugs.” This is very popular–probably 1/3 to 1/2 of students write on this. I have probably read hundreds of papers on this over the years. I suppose I could read more, if you want to write on this. The social problem might be that people have various illnesses that could be treated with marijuana, but the prohibitions or restrictions on marijuana in many jurisdictions prevent these treatments. Or it might be that there is widespread incarceration resulting from the drug war, with all of the damaging effects on families and income earning potential when a person is imprisoned. There are other problems you may be able to identify as well.
the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) regulation. This is the US government’s requirement that auto manufacturers make their cars with a minimum average gas mileage. Maybe that sounds great, until you think about what else is likely to happen. To make a car get better mileage, that usually means making it lighter in weight, which means that it’s generally going to be less able to protect the occupants in a crash. Several studies have indicated that the CAFE regulation has resulted in thousands of additional highway deaths and injuries due to people driving around in gas-sipping cars that are not as crashworthy as they otherwise would have been. An early study on this was done by economists Crandall and Graham.
government intervention in medical care. I have had students say that the Affordable Care Act is a “free market feature.” No. Government requirements on insurance companies, or government requirements that people buy insurance, are not free market features. But you could write about what’s happened to the cost of medical care as government has paid more of the bill. Basically, when people don’t pay as much of the cost of something, that makes them less careful about the price, and they buy more, so the price will often go up overall.
government intervention in housing markets. Some economists argue that the last recession was largely due to government making rules that made it artificially cheap to borrow money for a house. So the government intervention led to the social problem of a recession. Or you could write about the government intervention in housing markets through rent control. Rent control can act like a price ceiling, making it harder for people to find housing, causing deterioration in housing quality, contributing to housing market discrimination, and other problems.
Uber restrictions in various municipalities. Some people have said that Uber reduces drunk driving because it makes getting a ride cheaper than it would be if you had only taxi services available. But taxi drivers have sometimes tried to get their local governments to keep Uber, Lyft, etc. out of their cities. In Austin, TX, restrictions were applied, and DUI arrests went up.
FDA limits on new drugs, and expensive requirements for testing. Some economists say that the FDA actually causes deaths and suffering because it tends to raise the costs of bringing new drugs to market–so people suffer longer while waiting for the new drug to be allowed onto the market. One Nobel Prize winner said years ago that a delay in the introduction of an antibiotic called Septra cost about 250,000 lives.
You don’t have to pick from one of these. But they should give you an idea of what I’m looking for.
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