In other words, it’s not the case that market capitalism requires or generates loveless people. More like the contrary. Markets and even the much-maligned corporations encourage friendships wider and deeper than the atomism of a full-blow socialist regime or the claustrophobic, murderous atmosphere of a “traditional” village. Modern capitalist life is love-saturated. Olden life was not loving; communitarian life was not; and actually existing socialist life decidedly was not. No one dependent on a distant god such as Gosplan or Tradition can feel safe. Paradoxically, a market linked so obviously to our individual projects make us safer and more loving.

Deirdre N. McCloskey (2006)ook, The Bourgeois Virtues, p. 138