Episode 92: When Is Voluntary Choice Really Voluntary? (with Michael C. Munger)

Michael C. Munger joins us for a discussion on the nature of voluntary choice in economics. What counts as voluntary? Is it possible to be coerced by circumstance?

This week Michael C. Munger joins us to talk about voluntary transactions and questions of justice in market pricing.

What would everyone agree is truly voluntary? Are disparities in bargaining power coercive? What’s wrong with using the state to address these disparities? What about price gouging situations? What about sweatshops?

Show Notes and Further Reading

Dr. Munger’s 2010 paper “Euvoluntary or Not, Exchange is Just”.

Dr. Munger’s 2011 paper “‘Euvoluntary Exchange’ and the ‘Difference Principle’”.

Aristotle’s best-known work on ethics, The Nicomachean Ethics.

Harvard professor Michael Sandel’s 2013 book on coercion caused by circumstances, What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets.

James Taylor’s 1979 song about working in a textile mill, “Millworker”.

A recently-rediscovered short essay by John Locke on the morality of price theory, “Venditio”.

Dr. Munger’s new co-edited textbook, Philosophy, Politics, and Economics: An Anthology (2015).

[thermalCat]

Thanks, that was a particularly interesting episode

[nealthompson]

Michael Munger is a master at telling people what they don't want to hear in a way where they hear it anyway. Great episode.