How to Let People Become Willing to Act in Accordance with Morals？

Han Dongping

Abstract: It seems that the moral decline of Chinese society has not obstructed the economic development at all. So is moral still a good thing that worth our pursuing? According to the general understanding of the nature and function of moral, moral is not only beneficial for individuals in terms of improving their life value, but also conducive to the healthy operation of the social order. Besides, moral also can produce considerable economic benefits for its function of reducing the transaction cost in economic life. It is reasonable to think that China's economic performance would have been much better than today's if the moral decline did not happen. Therefore, obviously moral is still worth our pursuing. The chief reason why people do not behave morally, do not pay attention to such a good stuff is that the system of China's evil-stopping institutions usually not only fails to actually stop various evils but even worse it connives and encourages evil doings. In short, the system is effect-negative. So if we want to make people willing to practice morals, we must endeavor to correct the effect-negative system in the first place. And this good can be achieved quickly and high efficiently because of the late-mover advantage of institutional arrangement. Meanwhile, positively, we have to realize two institutional arrangements in the macroscopic level, one of which is a sound social credit system, and the otheris a social security system with neither too much nor too little high welfare. So long as such institutional arrangements mentioned above are realized, sour moral practice will become common.

Keywords: Morals, Coordinate Moral Norms, Self-disciplined Moral Norms, Benefits of Moral, Evil-stopping Institution