{"id":8807,"date":"2013-05-13T09:00:28","date_gmt":"2013-05-13T13:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.Centives.net\/S\/?p=8807"},"modified":"2013-05-13T07:36:34","modified_gmt":"2013-05-13T11:36:34","slug":"do-markets-shape-our-ethics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.Centives.net\/S\/2013\/do-markets-shape-our-ethics\/","title":{"rendered":"Do Markets Shape Our Ethics?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/www.Centives.net\/S\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/051313_1132_DoMarketsSh1.png\" width=\"512\" height=\"633\" \/><\/p>\n<p>In the past there have been markets for things now considered unethical such as slaves writes John Timmer. We normally assume that this was because we weren&#8217;t as moral or ethical back then, and that our views have developed to condemn such practices. We&#8217;re implicitly assuming that markets reflected the ethics of the time. But, according to one study, it&#8217;s also possible that ethics reflect the markets of the time:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Lab rats are normally killed if they&#8217;re unfit for scientific research. The authors of the study secured funding to keep a group of mice alive, and then asked experiment participants how much money they would accept before they would agree to have the mice killed.<\/li>\n<li>The participants were surveyed and about 45% of participants stated that they would rather take $13 than keep the animals alive.<\/li>\n<li>However when groups of buyers and sellers were allowed to freely trade for the rats&#8217; lives the price of a rat dropped to $6.50.<\/li>\n<li>The price seemed to drop over time as participants became more interested in taking whatever amount of money they could get.<\/li>\n<li>Thus, ethically, the participants put a high price on the lives of rats. But when given an opportunity to trade, their beliefs fell away.<\/li>\n<li>This might be because there are two people \u2013 a buyer and a seller \u2013 agreeing to see the mouse dead. Therefore we share the blame for their death. Moreover the mere existence of a market normalizes the idea of the trade.<\/li>\n<li>The authors conclude by noting that while the evidence suggests that free markets can distort moral viewpoints, other forms of economic distribution usually lead to significantly worse ethical abuses.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Read more about the study, its methodology, other reasons why people may have abandoned their moral code, and what happens when gift cards are used instead of cash over <a href=\"http:\/\/arstechnica.com\/science\/2013\/05\/of-mice-and-markets\/\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Source: <a href=\"http:\/\/arstechnica.com\/science\/2013\/05\/of-mice-and-markets\/\">ArsTechnica<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the past there have been markets for things now considered unethical such as slaves writes John Timmer. We normally assume that this was because we weren&#8217;t as moral or ethical back then, and that our views have developed to condemn such practices. We&#8217;re implicitly assuming that markets reflected the ethics of the time. But, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8806,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-bulletin"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/www.Centives.net\/S\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/051313_1132_DoMarketsSh1.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.Centives.net\/S\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8807","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.Centives.net\/S\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.Centives.net\/S\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.Centives.net\/S\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.Centives.net\/S\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8807"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.Centives.net\/S\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8807\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8809,"href":"http:\/\/www.Centives.net\/S\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8807\/revisions\/8809"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.Centives.net\/S\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.Centives.net\/S\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.Centives.net\/S\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.Centives.net\/S\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}