The Morality of Capitalism

Here at work in this example of the improvement of the family by Steven Horwitz ("Economic Forces and the Family") is the morality of capitalism:

For me, this story is a story of the liberatory role of capitalism and classical liberalism more generally. It’s not just that markets produce wealth and that enables people to live materially better lives. Markets, both by producing wealth and by pressuring other institutions, expand the range of choices people have available to them, which liberates them from old hierarchies and the stifling influence of state and community. The history of marriage and the family is also a history of couples being increasingly able to disententagle their families from the coercive limitations of the state and the prying eyes of the community. It was the advent of wage labor and rising wealth, both products of liberal capitalism, that freed families just as capitalism and democracy themselves freed individuals from other forms of arbitrary power. Classical liberalism sells itself short when it fails to emphasize the ways in which capitalism has liberated us in our personal choices. A classical liberal reading of the essays at Cato Unbound almost cannot help but tell this kind of story.