Normally, in market transactions we are not in the kind of bargaining situations described above. So the issue we face most of the time is whether to accept market determined wages and prices as fundamentally fair or not. As a general practical rule, efforts to produce alternatives run into rent-seeking public-choice type problems. So the question is not whether "we" can point to some idea better than the market but whether we will accept that the market produces rough fairness. I believe it does.
But lots of people's intuition is that market outcome are not fair. I presume for three reasons. Firstly I suspect the income and wealth disparities between the richest and poorest are much wider in a market economy than in the hunter gatherer tribes in which we evolved our instincts of fairness. Secondly in those hunter gathther tribes it was highly visible what each individual's contribution was. In a market economy its harder for the ordinary person to see what the contribution on a techbro is that warrants their riches. Thirdly our empathy also helps us notice that some people's contribution is limited by physical and mental handicaps or infirmities which they are unlucky to have and we don't feel it fair to give them shares proportional to their contribution which is limited by that bad luck. Intellectually however most realise that a market economy generates far more wealth to be distributed than a hunter gatherer tribe so our politics in relation to economics and welfare is a cultural negotiation about how to balance our hunter gatherer sense of fairness with the productivity of a modern market economy.
Normally, in market transactions we are not in the kind of bargaining situations described above. So the issue we face most of the time is whether to accept market determined wages and prices as fundamentally fair or not. As a general practical rule, efforts to produce alternatives run into rent-seeking public-choice type problems. So the question is not whether "we" can point to some idea better than the market but whether we will accept that the market produces rough fairness. I believe it does.
But lots of people's intuition is that market outcome are not fair. I presume for three reasons. Firstly I suspect the income and wealth disparities between the richest and poorest are much wider in a market economy than in the hunter gatherer tribes in which we evolved our instincts of fairness. Secondly in those hunter gathther tribes it was highly visible what each individual's contribution was. In a market economy its harder for the ordinary person to see what the contribution on a techbro is that warrants their riches. Thirdly our empathy also helps us notice that some people's contribution is limited by physical and mental handicaps or infirmities which they are unlucky to have and we don't feel it fair to give them shares proportional to their contribution which is limited by that bad luck. Intellectually however most realise that a market economy generates far more wealth to be distributed than a hunter gatherer tribe so our politics in relation to economics and welfare is a cultural negotiation about how to balance our hunter gatherer sense of fairness with the productivity of a modern market economy.
Nice analysis, from one naturalist to another.