The opening intro to this book was deceptively pedestrian to this reviewer: providing a laundry-list of things money can buy (helpfully called commodities whenever the emphasis is supposed to be that it should not be able to)--none of which greatly surprised her or gave her instinctive cause to take up arms.
In the same intro the moral objections--Sandel offers two--to unfettered marketisation of everything are outlined too. One is fairness: simply put "the more that money can buy, the more affluence matters". The other is corruption, and in particular the lowering of the valuation metric for a good (or action) from one of civic virtue to self-interest.
Similarly, this reviewer did not expect she would be dazzled much by the exploration of these objections beyond some hand-wringing about injustice and an appeal to call forth more of something that appears to be--perhaps lamentably--in short supply (as noted by Adam Smith 2.5 centuries prior). She was wrong--this is brilliant.
And the two moral objections both have biting veracity. In the first one (fairness, or the matter of true consent, equality or otherwise of bargaining power), it is noted that the lot of the poor worsens, not only as income/wealth inequality rises, but also as more good things can be bought/sold. And this is absolute as well as relative--to take the fairly innocuous issue of "fast-track" line-jumping at amusement parks, the absolute waiting time for the skint attendee would be lenthened (uncompensated), not just her wait relative to the cashed-up rider. Moreover the challenge that willingness-to-pay may be a bad measure of valuation, compared to willingness-to-wait, has much merit. (This reviewer recalls the time she was treated to corporation-supplied VIP seat at Wimbledon tennis, and how many of the holders of this privileged spot either missed play to drink in the marquee or left early for their trains.). Ability to pay restricts or enables willingness, fettering choices which devout market enthusiasts either assume are free, or brush aside the unfree-ness of.
Sandel's second objection (corruption of the commoditised thing) does not invoke fairness or inequality considerations--some things should not be traded even if bargaining powers are equal (fair). And this is because the buying and selling lowers the dimension of valuing something below its appropriate one. To an economist's way of thinking this ventures into value judgements that are typically avoided or discarded. But Sandel's problem with that is the same economists' assumption that a market in a good never changes the nature (valuation metric in particular) of the good itself.
It does--he says--with numerous examples. A child-care business in Haifa, Israel that began levying what it thought were fines for late parental pickups discovered that the market in lateness it created increased its incidence, as parents swapped out a civic duty to be on time for a price scale to show up when convenient to them. Residents of a Swiss canton who had marginally agreed to the location of a nuclear waste dump in their locality changed their minds when financial compensation was added to the offer, lowering the decision off a civic duty scale to a bribe dimension. Thus, market rules applied to exchanges governed by non-market norms (read: ethics), succeed in crowding out morals, which can then be hard to re-obtain. Who, after all, is going to bring them back and how?
The book's finest de-construction of its own thesis is in chapter 4 in respect of the viatical insurance business (an inverse life assurance practice where policies are flipped to third party investors who then have an interest in the early death of the insured)--if a truly amoral market enthusiast is to wave this through as no different to regular life insurance, then presumably she should allow that industry to advocate/lobby for public policy that hastens death of those insured . . . Just as life insurers may now lobby for the opposite (seat belts, tobacco taxes and the like)
Finally, but just as important, the author argues that the Smithian belief (more forcefully echoed by "complete markets" advocate Ken Arrow)--that civic altruism is in short supply, and should therefore (presumably) be relieved of excessive calls on its reserve by allowing prices (self-interest) to govern ever more of life's activity--is wrong. Sandel prefers to conclude that it is a muscle that grows stronger with use, and atrophies with too much rest. It is a pity that examples of the latter outnumber the former, but that is sufficient to give the message weight and some conviction.
In the same intro the moral objections--Sandel offers two--to unfettered marketisation of everything are outlined too. One is fairness: simply put "the more that money can buy, the more affluence matters". The other is corruption, and in particular the lowering of the valuation metric for a good (or action) from one of civic virtue to self-interest.
Similarly, this reviewer did not expect she would be dazzled much by the exploration of these objections beyond some hand-wringing about injustice and an appeal to call forth more of something that appears to be--perhaps lamentably--in short supply (as noted by Adam Smith 2.5 centuries prior). She was wrong--this is brilliant.
And the two moral objections both have biting veracity. In the first one (fairness, or the matter of true consent, equality or otherwise of bargaining power), it is noted that the lot of the poor worsens, not only as income/wealth inequality rises, but also as more good things can be bought/sold. And this is absolute as well as relative--to take the fairly innocuous issue of "fast-track" line-jumping at amusement parks, the absolute waiting time for the skint attendee would be lenthened (uncompensated), not just her wait relative to the cashed-up rider. Moreover the challenge that willingness-to-pay may be a bad measure of valuation, compared to willingness-to-wait, has much merit. (This reviewer recalls the time she was treated to corporation-supplied VIP seat at Wimbledon tennis, and how many of the holders of this privileged spot either missed play to drink in the marquee or left early for their trains.). Ability to pay restricts or enables willingness, fettering choices which devout market enthusiasts either assume are free, or brush aside the unfree-ness of.
Sandel's second objection (corruption of the commoditised thing) does not invoke fairness or inequality considerations--some things should not be traded even if bargaining powers are equal (fair). And this is because the buying and selling lowers the dimension of valuing something below its appropriate one. To an economist's way of thinking this ventures into value judgements that are typically avoided or discarded. But Sandel's problem with that is the same economists' assumption that a market in a good never changes the nature (valuation metric in particular) of the good itself.
It does--he says--with numerous examples. A child-care business in Haifa, Israel that began levying what it thought were fines for late parental pickups discovered that the market in lateness it created increased its incidence, as parents swapped out a civic duty to be on time for a price scale to show up when convenient to them. Residents of a Swiss canton who had marginally agreed to the location of a nuclear waste dump in their locality changed their minds when financial compensation was added to the offer, lowering the decision off a civic duty scale to a bribe dimension. Thus, market rules applied to exchanges governed by non-market norms (read: ethics), succeed in crowding out morals, which can then be hard to re-obtain. Who, after all, is going to bring them back and how?
The book's finest de-construction of its own thesis is in chapter 4 in respect of the viatical insurance business (an inverse life assurance practice where policies are flipped to third party investors who then have an interest in the early death of the insured)--if a truly amoral market enthusiast is to wave this through as no different to regular life insurance, then presumably she should allow that industry to advocate/lobby for public policy that hastens death of those insured . . . Just as life insurers may now lobby for the opposite (seat belts, tobacco taxes and the like)
Finally, but just as important, the author argues that the Smithian belief (more forcefully echoed by "complete markets" advocate Ken Arrow)--that civic altruism is in short supply, and should therefore (presumably) be relieved of excessive calls on its reserve by allowing prices (self-interest) to govern ever more of life's activity--is wrong. Sandel prefers to conclude that it is a muscle that grows stronger with use, and atrophies with too much rest. It is a pity that examples of the latter outnumber the former, but that is sufficient to give the message weight and some conviction.
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