In our modern industrial society, there are goods that almost all of us hold as being of great value. These extend beyond material things, and extend into such goods as community, liberty, and democracy. But these are not distributed equally: some sections of society typically find themselves with more, and others with less. This is recognized with respect to material goods, but it is also true of many other things we value, like freedom and power.
This course is structured around the investigation of two governing principles of American society: the fact that it is a market society, and the fact that it is a democracy. We will examine how the fact of its being a capitalist democracy affects the distribution of goods, rights, and powers. Among our concerns will be not only the question of whether capitalist markets are efficient, but also the question of whether market outcomes serve the ends of democracy and justice. We will explore the ways in which efficiency can sometimes come into conflict with justice, and how just institutions can in turn have a beneficial impact on efficiency.
The first part of the course introduces the “common wisdom” about markets – that they promote both efficiency and justice – and then subjects this to a critique. In the second part of the course, we then examine how markets actually work, and sometimes fail, by looking at their impact on health care, the environment, and the media. In the third and longest part of the course, we then look at how markets relate to democratic institutions, by focusing on how they affect the distribution of power in society, and how American democratic institutions have been affected by capitalism over time.
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