Making financial decisions based on your values wasn't making the world a better place. It may have even been making it worse.
There are costs to living a virtuous life; It requires going without. This is true psychologically, because sacrifice gives virtue meaning. But it's also true mathematically. You pay a price when you constrain who you will buy from, who you will work for, and what you will invest in. When times are good, the costs of a virtuous life may not seem too high, but eventually the bill comes due.
That reckoning is now. We may be seeing the end of the virtue economy bubble. And that's not necessarily bad, because the virtue economy wasn't making the world a better place. It may have even been making it worse.
Continue reading the entire piece here at Bloomberg Opinion (paywall)
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Allison Schrager is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal.
This piece originally appeared in Bloomberg Opinion
