Money and False Images

In order to facilitate cooperation we need some transferable and relatively longlasting form of wealth. Money, although not the only form of wealth, meets this need. It is, essentially, encapsulated choice. It both presupposes freedom and enhances it. For this reason money has often been construed in terms of freedom alone, to the exclusion of justice, thereby creating a false image of economic activity. Further false images are generated by our supposing money to be, like bullion, a material object with physical properties, by economists' talk of perfect competition, by construing business dealings in terms of one-off transactions in isolation from other business dealings and the rest of life, and by an exegesis of rationality in terms of maximising. These false images lead many to suppose that in business there is little room for moral considerations, and no alternative but to drive the hardest bargain possible, and to ignore all considerations except that of maximising profits.