{"id":4720,"date":"2009-09-05T18:33:40","date_gmt":"2009-09-05T16:33:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=4720"},"modified":"2009-09-05T18:33:40","modified_gmt":"2009-09-05T16:33:40","slug":"does-the-cbi-believe-anything-goes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2009\/09\/05\/does-the-cbi-believe-anything-goes\/","title":{"rendered":"Does the CBI believe anything goes?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span>The <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/business\/2009\/sep\/03\/richard-lambert-speech-adair-turner\" target=\"_blank\"><span>Guardian notes<\/span><\/a><span> that Richard Lambert of the CBI said this week that:<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span>In a free society, it's not the job of a politician \u2014 or, for that matter, of a regulator \u2014 to argue that a particular form of activity is or is not of social value.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span>Let&rsquo;s try that on the following for which there is undoubtedly market demand:<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span><span>\u00ac?<span> <\/span><\/span><\/span><span>Slavery <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span><span>\u00ac?<span> <\/span><\/span><\/span><span>Child labour <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span><span>\u00ac?<span> <\/span><\/span><\/span><span>Prostitution <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span><span>\u00ac?<span> <\/span><\/span><\/span><span>Drugs <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span>I could go on.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span>Do I need to do so?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span>Market enthusiasts are really making complete fools of themselves at the moment. They need to face reality: just because there is a market for something does not make it right. Just because a price can be set does not mean there is value.  Willing participants does not even mean benefit results.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span>Have these people never heard of externalities? Or ethics? Or society? Or democracy?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span>If not, how worried should we be?<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Guardian notes that Richard Lambert of the CBI said this week that: In a free society, it&#8217;s not the job of a politician \u2014<br \/><a class=\"moretag\" href=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2009\/09\/05\/does-the-cbi-believe-anything-goes\/\"><em> Read the full article&#8230;<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ethics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4720"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4720\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}