Work gobbled up all my free time for the immediate future. Hope to get back to this at some point... :-(

"haha, I'll keep acting unethically and reap the benefits of unethical behaviour".

Thank you for your irrelevant opinion. — Benkei

You don't provide any basis for why the acheivment of your objectives would be a more ethical way to run an economy. Looking at your worth criterion for example, it might be entirely obvious to you that a nurse ought make more than a professional athlete because nurses are more important than athletes, but it isn't to me. What is obvious to me is that we need nurses to acheive certain societal objectives, and the current system provides those nurses. If your system results in thousands of nurses and no athletes, I don't follow what ethical objective you acheived, other than to glut the market with the people you think are the best sorts of people.

To the extent you're now taxing the public by over supplying nurses and eliminating those folks you don't have as much regard for, that seems not only inefficient, but immoral in itself in that you're depriving people of resources just to promote those you like better than others. If there weren't enough nurses, I'd be in favor of figuring out a way to increase their numbers, but that's not what you're trying to acheive. You're just say nurses are worth more, so they get more.

The problem with your theory is that it isn't an economic theory at all, but it's a simplistic promotion of what you think are good values. At some point, market forces have to control this system or else you end up with too many nurses, and I'd suspect you're going to start having to select nurses on merit, but "merit" isn't identified in your trinity of values. Like it or not, people are going to choose professions based upon income received and so they'll look at your list of good folks and choose accordingly.

Your theory strikes me as a contemporary sort of Marxism, with the need element being directly from Marx and then the just production being a save the planet sort of ethics du jour element.

This is all to say if you want to create an economic theory, you have to look at what the consequences of that system will be. A car that doesn't run isn't worth having even if it was the most ethically produced car of all time. If your system causes economic collapse, it's hard to argue that was an ethical system.

This is all to say if you want to create an economic theory, you have to look at what the consequences of that system will be. A car that doesn't run isn't worth having even if it was the most ethically produced car of all time. If your system causes economic collapse, it's hard to argue that was an ethical system. — Hanover

As a kind of loose defense against this thought I guess it could be argued that ethics is necessarily embedded in any system of values. I cannot imagine how peoples opinions about things wouldn't effect the marketplace.

There is certainly something to be said for the traditions and values of different societies in how they assign the idea of worth. Historically different members of society are treated differently in manners that seem ridiculous to us today.

My main disagreement with framing income as 'moral' only seems relevant in a world where most people are effectively forced to take this or that job. Where choice remains (as opposed to slavery) there is a grey area where 'morality' has some clout. Pressure folks enough and they will demand something that at least 'appears' more just. Be this through dishes out punishments or offering handouts to rebalance the scales. Neither seems anything like ideal for the reasons I think Nozick is pointing too.