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| Eric Bush ('20) |
Is it acceptable to hunt endangered animals if you purchase an expensive permit which will ultimately fund their conservation? Should cities sell out advertising space on every inch of wall in a subway station? Or, should you be able to pay someone to stand in line for you for a Congressional hearing? In his book, What Money Can’t Buy, The Moral Limits of Markets, Michael Sandel considers questions such as these as he argues that we’ve moved from a having a market economy to becoming a market society.
I first heard of Sandel’s book, ironically, in another book. In Evan Osnos’ Age of Ambition, a journalistic narrative of modern China, Osnos writes that Sandel is able to fill up arenas across China with his message about the moral limits of materialism. I was excited to read this book as part of the UofL Center for Free Enterprise’s reading group. Sandel poses this central question: at what point does the introduction of money demean the value of a good or service, and have markets gone too far?
In one example, he discusses schools’ attempts to pay students to earn good grades or to read a certain number of books. The problem, Sandel argues, is that paying kids to learn commodifies education and demeans its value. But is that a tradeoff worth making if students can attain better educational outcomes? Or, should you be able to sell your life insurance to an investor whose annual rate of return depends on when you die, perhaps leading him to hope for your imminent departure? Creepy, yes, but should it be illegal?
Some of Sandel’s examples are less troubling and come across as a bit whiny. For example, Sandel laments the “skyboxification” of baseball and longs to return to the era of his childhood in which baseball was a “democratic equalizer.” That is, bosses sat next to workers in the same rows, not high above in luxury suites. Or later, he complains about amusement park fast passes, suggesting that everyone should bear the long lines equally.
Unfortunately, like most philosophers, Sandel has more questions than answers and doesn’t provide a framework under which to consider these dilemmas. Sandel says the purpose of this book is to simply start a conversation. But what Sandel doesn’t realize is that perhaps the best conversation we can have, and one we have every day, is through the market. There is a moral limit to markets. If a market is truly corrupt or truly immoral, the solution is simple: don’t participate.
Eric Bush, of Louisville, Ky., is a junior McConnell Scholar at the University of Louisville, where he studies political science and finance.