You Had Better Re-Think That

I got into a conversation - actually, two monologues going on simultaneously - with a conservative juggernaut who expressed the opinion that Markets and Capitalism are neither moral nor immoral; when the Dow is manipulated into dropping 1,000 points, this is an extra-moral event. He said that markets and capitalism were "amoral".

I think most of the clowns mean to say that it makes no sense to speak of morals and markets, not that markets are amoral. To be amoral means to have no concept of morality, to essentially be a psychopath:  one may act morally, one may act immorally: it is all the same. For an amoral entity to pursue a path of evil  is the most horrendous human event possible, for there exists the possibility of unrelenting evil, structured by a complete lack of any glimmer of a moral idea.

To be immoral means at least that a person acknowledges a moral code which they willingly decide to break. In their every immoral act is a assertion of the validity of the moral code they spurn. However, the amoral sees nothing but their own impulses, and if those impulses tend to the dark path, there will be unremitting evil and suffering. I believe we've tested this hypothesis a couple times in the past century.