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In What Money Can't Buy, Harvard political theorist Michael Sandel develops two arguments for the claim that the rise of market values is morally problematic. First, he worries that market values could exacerbate economic injustices by advantaging the wealthy at the expense of the poorest and most vulnerable members of the political community. Second, he claims that market values can crowd out other values such as moral equality, civic duty, norms of cooperation and respect, aesthetic appreciation, and altruism. He also suggests that the commodification of some goods is intrinsically bad, even if it does not crowd out other values.
In making these arguments, Sandel's goal is to begin a public conversation about the moral limits of markets so that members of the political community can deliberately decide what should or should not be for sale. He complains that the emergence of market values came upon us, and exhorts the reader, ‘it's time to ask whether we want to live this way’ (p. 6). Sandel makes his case against markets by describing markets in everything from organs (p 95) to life insurance policies (p. 131) to places in line at amusement parks (p. 18). For each case, he argues that markets crowd out civic virtues or exacerbate inequality or just appear really unseemly. I am skeptical that the evidence Sandel presents against markets can justify his conclusions about civic virtue and inequality. Yet even if his criticism of markets is successful, we should be wary of inferring that these arguments should inform how leaders approach markets, because restrictions on markets violate citizens' rights and prevent people from living and working in accordance with their own values.
1 THE EMPIRICAL CASE AGAINST MARKETS
Sandel's clearest thesis is that some of the markets that developed in the twentieth century have had bad effects because they contribute to inequality and a decline in civic virtue. On his account, markets are objectionably unequal because ‘market choices are not free choices if some people are desperately poor or lack the ability to bargain on fair terms.’ Markets also enable richer citizens to isolate themselves from their poorer compatriots, which he claims undermines civic virtue. Sandel also worries that markets change our attitudes towards goods in ways that can crowd out...