Just Pricing

The tradition of just price theory is generally regarded in contemporary economic literature, and certainly in media editorials and commentary, as an outmoded and naïve approach to commercial life. Price is determined by supply and demand in an adequate market; the rest is sentiment. Yet even so, various intuitions which involve some implicit account of unjust price survive. We suggest that our continued attachment to the idea and demands of just pricing is rationally defensible, and is so in the context of a commitment to the general legitimacy of market exchange relations. We thus develop what we take to be an account of justice in pricing which is not open to the standard objections about the irrationality of such aspirations. Just Pricing? A Modern Scholastic Puzzle A just price, a just wage, a just rate of interest, is a contradiction in terms. The question what a person ought to get in return for his goods and labour is a question absolutely devoid of meaning. The only rational questions are what can he get in return for his goods or labor and whether he ought to sell them at all. -R. G. Collingwood, “Economics as a Philosophical Science”, Ethics 1926, p. 174