ABSTRACT
To make a successful corruption-based criticism of the market, one needs to prove certain things and provide certain kinds of evidence. One needs real evidence that the market in fact corrupts. Many people accuse the market of corrupting people's character without ever supplying or referencing the needed empirical evidence that it in fact does so. The people advancing the Corruption Objection assert a controversial empirical claim, namely, that certain kinds of exposure or involvement in certain markets cause certain kinds of bad character. They have to prove their hypothesis, the same way that, say, medical researchers who want to claim that a chemical causes cancer have to prove their hypothesis. A critic arguing that markets corrupt our character should consider whether this corruption is outweighed or not by the other benefits of markets. So, suppose Benjamin Barber is right when he asserts that markets infantilize adults.
