Knight further argues that “the wants which an economic system operates to gratify are largely produced by the workings of the system itself.” The economic order does not simply satisfy pre-existing demand; “its activity extends to the formation and radical transformation, if not to the outright creation, of the wants themselves.” Any ethical assessment of an economic system must therefore consider “the kind of wants which it tends to generate or nourish,” not only its efficiency in satisfying “wants as they exist at any given time.”
