I have discovered, however, that good economic arguments only go so far in changing the minds of market-skeptic conservatives. If the state doesn’t engage in extensive and deep economic regulation, I’ve heard more than one conservative say, what’s to stop rampant materialism from becoming the norm? How, they say, do we prevent the type of dynamic commercial relationships associated with markets from putting immense pressure on other types of human relations, especially families?
The good news is that many free-market thinkers in the past thought long and hard about these matters, many of which revolve around the type of moral and cultural ecology most suitable for market economies. Consider, for instance, the German ordoliberal economist Wilhelm Röpke. . . .
Andrew Stuttaford writes about the supposed dilemma that Chinese companies pose for ESG funds:
This is a dilemma? Does the “g” in ESG stand for genocide? Because that is what is taking place in Xinjiang. Regardless of climate change, investors who believe that ESG (a variant of “socially responsible” investing in which actual or prospective portfolio companies are scored against a series of environmental, social or governance — the real “g”, in case you wondered — benchmarks) is in some sense ethical surely should find it unacceptable to take a stake in any firm manufacturing (or using) solar-panel materials (notably solar-grade polysilicon) processed in Xinjiang by forced labor.
But should that be the end of the matter?