ORDER

I

“Follow the money” was the short and simple advice given by the secret informant, within the American Government, to Bob Woodward, the journalist from Washington Post, in aid of his investigations of the Watergate Hotel break in. Money has often been claimed, by economists, to only be a veil that covers the real value and the economy. As a medium of exchange, money is vital for the smooth functioning of exchange in the market place.

However, increasing monetization of most social transactions has been viewed as potentially problematic for the social order, in as much as it signifies a move to evaluating value, and ethical desirability, of most areas of social interaction only in terms of price obtained in the market place.

2. Price based notions of value and values, as propounded by some extreme neo-liberal doctrines, implies that the values that ought to be promoted, in societies, are the ones for which people are willing to pay a price for. Values, and social actions, for which an effective demand is not expressed in the market, are neglected, even if lip service is paid to their essentiality. However, it cannot be denied that not everything that can be, and is transacted,