ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on a conception of ethics, however, that combines economics and ethics. Most kinds of ethics, however, resulting from the conditions of pre-modern societies, ignore the possibility of win-win situations and instead require us to be moderate, to share and to sacrifice, as this would have been functional in zero-sum games. These conceptions distinguish in more or less strict ways, between self-interest and altruistic motivation. Traditional ethics concerns actions: it calls directly for changes in behaviour. Consequently, order ethics changes the theoretical precedence: discuss problems of implementation already in the process of justification. In general, ethics cannot require people to abandon their individual calculation of advantages. In the modern world, the individual pursuit of self-interest can promote traditional moral ideals in a much more efficient way: these ideals are implemented in the institutional framework of a society. Modern societies, by contrast, can be characterized by economists and other social theorists alike, as societies with continuous growth.
