The 4th PE-DPS: Lukas Fuchs on Shaping the Market

In this 4th session of the series, Lukas Fuchs (University College London) will present some of his work and will invite us for a critical discussion on 'shaping the market.' Come join us in this challenge!

Title: "Shaping the Market: Enablement, Responsibility and Climate Change"

Abstract:
Contemporary societies create and shape markets. The range of products accessible to consumers in most parts of the world has constantly expanded: electric power, cars, phones or vitamin pills have been added just in the last century. Markets are not given by the gods, nor are they natural entities we can merely content with. Their nature is partly subject to political will. Thus, which markets are shaped and created is a question of politics and of value (Mazzucato 2016). We need to consider which markets would be detrimental and which conducive to society. In other words, we require a normative framework to assess new markets that could be brought about as a result of innovation and economic policy.

The proposal of this paper is that we should understand the value of some such new markets as deriving from the relationship these markets have to individuals. In the context of climatic changes, markets should be understood as institutions that enable individuals to fulfil their moral duties, especially relating to climate change. They incentivize, channel and create norms that make it more attractive, easier or even possible for them to engage in this climate-friendly behaviour. In this way, the creation of a new market may be an instance of what Caney (2014) calls second-order responsibility. By considering new markets that did not exist before, we open up the space from markets that are too bad to exist, to those too good not to exist.