Doing the Right Things: The Private Sector Response to Hurricane Katrina as a Case Study in the Bourgeois Virtues

Both critics and defenders of the market economy are often quick to claim that market actors are not, or at least do not need to be, virtuous in the classical sense of the term. Critics use this claim as a strike against markets as they argue that markets both rely on and encourage narrowly self-interested behavior and do not reward much, if anything, of what has historically been understood as “the virtues.” Defenders of markets often argue that the very advantage of markets is that they need not rely on citizens being virtuous in order for them to produce the efficiency and productivity that will benefit all. From Mandeville through to Stigler, Friedman, and even Gordon Gekko’s “greed is good,” the beauty of markets has been seen in the parsimony of the way they produce social benefits requiring “only” self-interest and good institutions. Economists and other defenders of markets need not concern themselves with questions of virtue, nor are markets or capitalism seen as producing or encouraging any sort of virtues.