Exchange thus requires a kind of other-regardingness. To be sure, it is not altruism. Our concern with the advantages of the butcher, the brewer, and the baker is not the love of our neighbors. Exchange does not require such love. Commerce, however, is impossible when I am indifferent to the concerns of my trading partner. In a more aristocratic age, tradespeople were an object of scorn precisely because of the servility that the market imposed on them. Gentlemen possessed the luxury of satisfying their needs while maintaining indifference to others. The tradesman, in contrast, could not afford hauteur because he was dependent on the satisfaction of others’ interests for the gratification of his own needs.
-Nathan Oman ( The Dignity of Commerce)
Progressives / Socialists are like the old aristocrats of old like Oman describes – they look




