What Money Can't Buy The Moral Limits Of Markets Book Review

Past Professor Jeffery Atik

In What Money Tin't Purchase, Michael Sandel decries the emergence of markets that displace older norms, "commodifying" before forms of social organization that better correspond to our (or Sandel's) ethical intuitions. Sandel is bothered by fast track lanes, priority boarding, sales of organs or surrogate mothering services, paying for grades, and what he describes as the "skyboxification" of American society. While there remain some things money cannot purchase, many things can exist bought today that in prior times were allocated using non-market norms.

Sandel views with alarm the increasing hegemony of markets -- where markets are the go-to policy prescription for every social want. If we wish to heave the performance of inner-city school children, we should pay them for bookish achievement -- according to a market-line of thinking. In that location's a cost, argues Sandel, to the application of market notions to novel domains, as markets operate (through "incentives," a neologism that Sandel mocks) to displace other values, such as inculcating a beloved of learning, devoting oneself to one's children and savoring a sense of community. Markets intrude on moral domains and limit the telescopic for moral discourse -- and this loss is nether-appreciated.

All truthful enough -- but in at least some cases non-marketplace values have displaced markets. For much of its history, the draft had market features. One could buy i'south way out of Lincoln's draft -- or find a replacement to serve. And during nigh of the Vietnam era, the wealthy could avoid the draft by remaining in school. The typhoon, of grade, has been suspended for several decades, but it is hard to imagine its return in any form with buy-outs. There may exist other examples where the relevant institutional shift is abroad from markets: it was much easier to purchase 1's way into an Ivy League school a generation agone than it is at present (Sandel concedes that even at present it may be possible for some to do so).

Sandel fails to requite a consistent business relationship -- across his varied and many examples -- of precisely where and when markets exceed moral limits. He writes of "abuse" or "degradation" as if at that place were discernible moral content to these notions, but they are just baskets for a variety of values. At present I am as horrified every bit Sandel is at the thought of a hunter killing a blackness rhino (or even more cruelly, a defenseless walrus) -- and instituting fees for the privilege and and then putting the collected funds to proficient utilize fails to appease me. But I admit (as certainly Sandel would) that others might not share my moral objections. That is, his and my valuation of an brute's life might not be broadly shared. In a softer version of his thesis, I suppose Sandel would affirm that the permission-conceding effect of resorting to markets forecloses moral discourse -- though I'thousand not certain that foreclosure e'er follows.

At times, his instincts seem to reverberate a certain squeamishness. I simply am not bothered past the idea that my employer might take out an insurance policy on my life, and hence take crusade to root for my demise (so long as it does not act on its interests -- a point Sandel recognizes). I exercise not encounter how this leads to a coarsening of our general regard for life.
Sandel does demonstrate (past several examples) the possible errors of marketplace-thinking in domains where stiff norms operate. He recalls Richard Titmuss's famous 1970 comparative study of blood collection, The Souvenir Relationship. In the United Kingdom, blood is given past unpaid donors who act from civic motives. In contrast, the United states of america largely (though not exclusively) relies on blood banks, where donors are paid. This leads to the commodification of blood donations, with the outcome that the claret supply in the U.s. is more expensive, more risky and less secure.

Better is Sandel's "skyboxification" argument, in which newly created markets function to separate us from one some other. We take long used status symbols to mark our position in the social hierarchy, and reside in highly (economically) segregated communities. Equally our society drifts farther and further away from an egalitarian ideal, we have new opportunities -- such every bit the skybox -- to enforce class separation at what had been fundamentally a communal upshot. Merely that abandonment of the public schools in this land seems to be a far more than serious business organisation -- and threat to our sense of customs -- than tolerating the wealthy (and oft bored) to isolate themselves from the fans during able-bodied events. Here, the existence of markets undercuts our democratic opportunities, yet individual schools are a given.

In that location are certainly many domains where markets are kept at bay. Y'all cannot buy an "A" at Loyola Law Schoolhouse -- equally least I do non believe you tin.

What Coin Can't Buy is longlisted for the 2012 Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Yr Award.

Encounter my review of Philip Coggan's Paper Promises: Debt, Money and the New World Order, which is also longlisted for the 2012 FT/Goldman Sachs Award.

Follow me on Twitter @jefferyatik.

Source: http://summaryjudgments.lls.edu/2012/09/book-review-money-can-buy-moral-limits_4631.html

Posted by: perryfeas1993.blogspot.com