Obstacles to Achieving the Purpose of Business

Abstract

Chapter 6 looks at several problems businesses can face in the achievement of their proper goal within a market economy. These include Karl Marx’s notions of “alienation,” lying, and exploitation, the extent to which markets and commercial society can conflict with some of our deep-seated and possibly pretheoretic intuitions, and problems associated with asymmetries of knowledge and so-called rational ignorance. This chapter outlines how businesses should deal with such worries and address them in good faith. It also articulates a claim about the proper scope of business’s moral obligations, which will go some way toward helping businesses focus not only on what they can do but on what they should do.