ABSTRACT
This chapter considers negative as well as positive aspects of the price system that affect billions of people and it also considers deeper, causal, social structures from which policies emerge. The chapter reviews a range of interpretations. In Dialectical Critical Realism (DCR), structures are generative, explanatory, causal powers. 1M identifies beliefs, needs, problems and absences that 2E second edge aims to negate. 2E sees real, determinate, causal absence in the need to negate all 'constraints, absences, oppressive power2 relations, inequities, structures'. In the price ethic, price mechanisms must be free, without constraints that would unbalance natural justice. The notional price of each city street is affected by reported crime rates and police presence. 3L totalities add up to systems that are neither free nor fair; money may move freely but in ways that restrict people. 4D is the dimension of self-aware, critical introspection that re-examines 1M insights and subsequent emerging contradictions between theories and practices, beliefs and behaviours.
