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> When you start demanding that morality, for all its subjectivity and relativity, be involved with economics, you invite troubles. The next step is for morality to be mandated through regulations.

That logic is the problem -- particularly on the part of the people who actually want to implement it. Legislating morality is a disease that encourages people to believe they only need to act morally when the law forces them to.

The thing about markets is that they don't want anything in particular. It isn't "markets" that want poor people to remain poor, it's a collection of specific instances of non-poor people who choose to value something else over improving the lot of the poor. A market is just a collection of people doing whatever it is they think is best. It doesn't have a conscience outside of the individuals that make it up, but its results do reflect the collective choices of the participants.

In my view, the correct way of fighting monopolies would be using the great social tools at our disposal to make consumers more informed about the distant implications of their buying decisions. This will create an informed Capitalism, one where in the consumers are the ultimate regulators.

Can't upvote this enough.

Great idea/ideal, and I share it... but until I'm wearing a HUD that can tell me what materials and processes in which factories and ports were used at each step of production and distribution contributing to each lot of cereal in the store, I'm not really informed enough at the point of economic decision to accurately reflect my utility function through my purchases. And good luck getting the producers of goods to share details even approaching that. As a class, they routinely fight additional labeling of their products, getting access to their production and distribution databases will be a far worse fight.

One might say being an informed consumer is a moral imperative, because investing time and energy into being informed sure doesn't provide a competitive advantage.

I agree, up to a point. People with disposable income can 1) spend what's required - in time and money - to be informed and 2) be willing to spend more money, if they deem it necessary, to support those distant implications - or not. But how many people are in a position to do that? In the U.S., that number seems to be dwindling, as the middle-class shrinks. Of course, the middle-class is growing in some other countries, but. . .

It's either you let the lower classes decide what self serving causes they want to support (near as in low price, or far as in environmental concerns), or you force these choices on them by the way of regulation.

Other than that, the middle-upper class is becoming more aware, informed and caring, and that more than makes up for the lack of involvement of the lower classes.