Ethics and Issues in Public Policy

Several reasons can be identified which discourage issues from being defined as “ethical” issues in public policy making. One is the cost of resolving ethical issues, another is that it is harder to predict what the outcomes will be of argument and discussion about ethical issues, and a third is that identifying issues as ethical makes salient the prospect for allocating moral responsibility and blame. Efforts to increase the scope of market mechanisms are associated with avoidance of ethical issues, since markets offer routine, quasi-mechanical processes to resolve disagreement. However, to avoid definition of issues as ethical problems tends to push aside some concerns which it is important to address as part of human life.