What Money Can't Buy by Michael J. Sandel
Is it acceptable to pay more to cut a line?
No one likes to wait in line. Sometimes you can pay to jump the queue. First-class or business class airline passengers can use priority lanes that take them to the front of the line for screening. This seems reasonable. What about ticket scalping for a public theatre’s free summer Shakespeare performance when the city intended to provide to their residents for free as a civic celebration? What about ticket scalping for emergency doctor appointments? What about hiring people to stand in line in Capitol Hill so wealthy lobbyists can corner the market on congressional hearings?
Economists see scalping as maximizing social utility by making underpriced goods available to those most willing to pay for them; therefore, should not be vilified for violating the integrity of the queue. However, why do some instances of paid queue jumping, line standing, and ticket scalping strike us as acceptable, while others slightly unpleasant or even horrible?
Sandel believes that is because market values are appropriate to certain goods but corrosive to others.
We live in a time when almost everything can be bought and sold. Over the past three decades, markets and market values have come to govern our lives as never before. What Money Can’t Buy is a book that takes up one of the missing debates in contemporary politics of our time: Is there something wrong with a society in which everything is for sale? Are there any moral limits of markets? If yes, what are they? How can we prevent market values from reaching into spheres of life where we have decided that they don't belong?
As the cold war ended, we entered an era of market triumphalism where market-oriented thinking enjoyed unrivaled prestige, understandably so. No other mechanism for organizing the production and distribution of goods has proved as successful at generating affluence and prosperity. Yet, the unwavering faith of the self-correcting power of free markets became in doubt as the 2008 financial crisis hit, and the near collapsed once-mighty Wall Street financial firms required a massive bailout at taxpayer’s expense. This financial crisis did more than cast doubt on the ability of markets to allocate risk efficiently, it also promoted a widespread sense that markets have become detached from morals and that we need to somehow reconnect them.
“Some say that moral failing at the heart of market triumphalism was greed, which led to irresponsible risk taking. However, this is at best a partial diagnosis. While greed played a role in financial crisis, the most fateful change that unfolded during the past three decades was not an increase in greed. It was the expansion of markets, and of market values, into spheres of life where they don’t belong.”
Without quite realizing, without ever deciding to do so, we have drifted from having a “market economy” to being a “market society”. You may ask what is the difference? Well, a market economy is a tool—a valuable and effective tool— for organizing productive activity. Meanwhile, a market society is a way of life in which market values seep into every aspect of human endeavor. The missing ethical question is about the role and reach of markets. Also, before we can decide whether a good should be allocated by markets, we have to decide what kind of good it is and how it should be valued.
Throughout the book, the author Sandel gave myriad examples of markets displacing queues and any other nonmarket ways to allocating goods, ranging from weird but understandable, unpleasant, to straight up horrifying.
We have to remember that market and queues are not the only ways of allocating resources. Some goods we distribute by merit, others by need, still others by lottery or chance. College typically admit students with the greatest talent and promise, not those who apply first or offer the most money. Hospital emergency rooms treat patients according to the urgency of their condition, not according to the order of their arrival or their willingness to pay extra to be seen first. Jury duty is allocated by lottery; if you are called to serve, you cannot hire someone else to take your place.
It is also critical to understand, using market to allocate goods also express and promote certain attitudes toward the goods being exchanged. Putting a price on the good things in life can corrupt them. Paying kids to read books might get them to read more, but also teach them to regard reading as a chore rather than a source of intrinsic satisfaction. Auctioning seats in freshman class to the highest bidders might raise revenue but also erode the integrity of the university and the value of its diploma. Hiring foreign mercenaries to fight our wars might spare the lives of our citizens but corrupt the meaning of citizenship.
When we decide that certain goods may be bought and sold, we decide, at least implicitly, that it is appropriate to treat them as commodities, as instruments of profit and use, this is where we need to tread cautiously, because not all goods are properly valued in this way. The most obvious example is human beings. Slavery was appalling because it treated human beings as commodities. We don’t allow citizens to sell their votes, even though others might be eager to buy them. Why not? Because we believe that civic duties should not be regarded as private property but should be viewed instead as public responsibilities. To outsource them is to demean them, to value them in the wrong way.
These examples illustrate a broader point: some of the good things in life are corrupted or degraded if turned into commodities. So, to decide where the market belongs, and where it should be kept at a distance, we have to decide how to value the goods in question. There is no definite answers in this book, and people will always disagree with how we value certain goods. However, what is important is we remember that we need to make conscious decisions about how market govern aspects of our lives and whether those are appropriate.
Overall, this is an interesting read. My opinion aligns with Sandel's, the market economy is an effective and valuable tool, however, there are somethings should not be for sale.
