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I am wondering: Is there an account of market economies that explains that markets only work properly in case labor is unalienated and values are intrinsic? Isnt that sth that Sandel wrote about?

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Is a freelance worker an alienated one ?

Imagine a society of freelance workers who sell to each other their products and services (fish, cooking, …), for money. It is a free market capitalist economy, with neither employees nor employers. Are these workers alienated ? If so, are they alienated by their customers ?

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only, at a stretch, if the market's emergence benefits from their labour and the freelances who then suffered a discount, i.e. alienation is what the bosses get, if nothing is got then there is no alienation, so the market itself would have to be the boss (here alienation is not a psychological state but a legal one relating to transfer of title -of value/profit/stock to the bosses/owner of capital, the legal system says this is okay)

FUN FACT: the term metaphor was used metaphorically to mean metaphor as a figure of speech, originally it refer to the "alienation" of title of real estate, when you sold land it was 'moved over' or'caried over' to someone else.

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