What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets

by Michael J. Sandel

Book Overview

Should we pay children to read books or to get good grades? Should we allow corporations to pay for the right to pollute the atmosphere? Is it ethical to pay people to test risky new drugs or to donate their organs? What about hiring mercenaries to fight our wars? Auctioning admission to elite universities? Selling citizenship to immigrants willing to pay? In What Money Can't Buy , Michael J. Sandel takes on one of the biggest ethical questions of...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0374203032
• ISBN13: 9780374203030
• Release Date: April 2012
• Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux
• Length: 244 Pages
• Weight: 1.12 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.4" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Pushing back against the “Morality” of the Market

I was a reluctant initial reader. The framework of “markets” and “incentives” explains so much about human behavior, and the language of markets pervades our discourse. So I thought Sandel was probably tilting at windmills, like a modern day Don Quixote. But Sandel thoughtfully (and persuasively) pulls the threads at the edges of the contemporary “market” mindset: if market economics are so powerful, if “everything has a price,” then why do we not buy and sell human beings, legalize prostitution, or even let potential jurors pay someone else to take their spots on the jury? Sandel does not spoon feed us simplistic answers. And his humility is refreshing in this age of absolutist thinking. He then turns to the corrosive effect that market-based discourse has wrought on our democracy. He suggests a few ways of engaging in a discourse that brings values and moral judgment back into the dialogue. Definitely a read that will get you thinking, especially the next time you hear a politician or journalist or policy wonk use the term, “incentivize.”