Market-based ethics restrict moral obligation to non-harm and forbid positive duties to others.

Evidence

What Hayek called the ‘morals of the market’ were a set of individualistic, commercial values that prioritised the pursuit of self-interest above the development of common purposes. A market society required a moral framework that sanctioned wealth accumulation and inequality, promoted individual and familial responsibility, and fostered submission to the impersonal results of the market process at the expense of the deliberate pursuit of collectively formulated ends. It also required that moral obligations are limited to the requirement that we refrain from harming others, and do not require positive obligations to others. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 26

Categorization

• DEFINE: Specifies precisely what ‘the morals of the market’ demanded: self-interest, inequality tolerance, negative-only obligations.
• SHARE: Worth sharing with anyone working on ethics of markets — the negative-liberty-only moral framework in Hayek’s own words.
• ADDENDUM: Directly supports ‘On Sacrifice’ themes of stratified obligation and to whom moral duties are owed in a market society.