Provide free markets just outcomes?

Seminar paper from the year 2007 in the subject Business economics - Economic Policy grade: 13 Stellenbosch Universitiy (University of Stellenbosch (South Africa)) course: Modern Economic Systems and Global Capitalism language: English abstract: Not only in economics people often talks about markets in fairly differentcircumstances. What does that mean? The Britannica Online Encyclopedia serves uswith the following definition:A market is a mean by which the exchange of goods and services takes placeas a result of buyers and sellers being in contact with one another either directlyor through mediating agents or institutions.1What they call 'means' could also be named as a social arrangement. Analogously tothe physical location of a street market every other form of markets is a man-madeinstitution in order to organize trade. Thereby it is in addition to the right of ownproperty probably the most salient feature of every capitalist system.But as long as markets are not natural but social constructs they and the way theyare shaped have to be subjects of human monitoring. Although this seems self-evident from an impartial point of view free markets and their results are often takenfor granted by some economists. This article focuses on the results of markets theso called market outcomes. More precisely it is about the justice of market outcomeswith special attention to the ideology and thought of Neo-liberalism with respect tothis subject.During this article I will continue along the following structure: First I will expose thepossibility of market failures and distinguish these failures into traditional marketfailures and another form of undesirable market outcomes the failures-of-marketoutcomes. After that we will devote attention to the upswing of the New Right and itsideological background. After focusing on two extremely influential thinkers -Friedrich von Hayek and Robert Nozick - we will examine the justic