I am talking on what I think is an important issue tonight, the morality of capitalism, an issue I hope you also think is important as indicated by your attendance here. If you are here for some other reason, well, too bad, because that is what we are going to talk about.

Of course this task is especially interesting and, one might say, especially challenging given the economic environment we presently live in, and particularly given what has transpired in that environment the last year.

We have seen the economies of the world wracked by economic problems, first expressed as the asset bubble in housing prices, especially in the U.S., followed by stock market downturns worldwide, then the near collapse of the financial structure of most of the developed world.

There have been charges of unchecked greed, malfeasance, wrong-headed government policies, and failures in the coordination process that generally goes under the label of market capitalism. Where does this leave us? Should we even be attempting a moral defense of this system that has wreaked so much havoc in so many lives?

Well, I am going to take that issue head on, and say yes, we should. There are good reasons from a moral perspective to defend capitalism, or more appropriately a social coordination system based on private property rights and prices.

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P. J. Hill is the George F. Bennett Professor of Economics at Wheaton College.