Ethics are concerned with promoting mutually acceptable behaviour between people and groups of people.

Economics are concerned with people and orgaisations obtaining and using scarce resources.

So ethical economics is the combination of the two: promoting acceptable behaviour between those who are striving to obtain those resources.

It is often said that the words “Ethical” and “Economics” cannot be used together. But that implies that people must be too concerned with maximising their own share of those resources to consider the effects of those actions on others. That we should in effect not have “loving our neighbour as ourselves” as a principle which we hold as the essential basis for looking for the development of the human race and ourselves within it.

This site is not concerned with discussing the right or wrong of believing in fundamental ethics: nor in delving into the mathematical complexities of the academic economist.

Much good work has been done on this subject by eminent academics. But we aim here at the general reader. We seek to avoid the necessary kind of statement made by John Broome: “.. the economists’ papers take for granted some terminology and assumptions that philosophers might find puzzling, and the philosophers’ papers may raise similar puzzles for the economists.” We aim here to assume minimal knowledge on either subject, yet stress the importance of the practical use of both.

Rather in this site we seek to contribute towards the acceptance that economic activities must have an ethical basis: thus all suggestions and “posts” - and “blogs” - will be very welcome.

Important note for contributors:-

“Zygmunt Bauman … dares to write in language that ordinary people can understand” says the cover of his book “Does Ethics have a chance in a World of consumers”

Fine sentiments. But an example of the language is:

“.. The daring feat of phenomenological reduction.. deploying the tools of ‘bracketing away’ and epoché..” (page 40)

This is the language is of academics specialists and “ordinary people” will make very little of it.

Which is why we have this site where “phenomenological”, “teleology”, “Pareto optimality” etc will not occur. The academic work is very necessary and desirable. But if the concept of ethical economics is to reach “ordinary people” much more commonly accepted words are essential.

In line with this approach the niceties of quoting one author against another should be avoided. Please shun the academic quirk of quoting how many books in how many languages have been consulted! We want above all original ideas which might or might not work. Many will be repeats long dicarded by others. But just sometimes “wrong” ideas turn out to be “right”.

We may well know that there are academic divisions on “Love your neighbour” or “distributive economics”. But this is not a site aimed at such matters. We are interested in the message, not so much the background.

The “Gospels”, not the “commentaries on the gospels”.