ABSTRACT
The market mechanism consists of a number of buyers and a number of sellers interacting with one another in such a way that goods and services are exchanged at some price. It is endorsed, as a matter of justice, by all libertarians, including left-libertarians such as Hillel Steiner. It also seems to be condoned by all liberal-egalitarian conceptions of justice, i.e. all conceptions that try to combine a commitment to equal respect for the diverse conceptions of the good life to be found in a pluralistic society and a commitment to substantive equality in whatever makes our lives better lives. Why? The answers turn out to vary and, for a subset of them only, to overlap with one of two answers to be found in left-libertarianism.
