Should everything be for sale?

In modern day life, almost everything seems to be up for sale? There is nothing that money can't buy- from a vote in the legislation to the avoidance of jail time for criminal activity, from bribing a policeman on the street to a businessman avoiding penalties for selling illegal drugs. There is a price for everything. Many economists argue that in a free market that is as it should be and that price for any good or service is best arrived at between the buyer and the seller in a free and open negotiation and that this serves the public good most effectively. Or does it? But is the free market really free? Or does it come at the expense of civic values we neglect at our peril? Are there some goods and services that we should not barter in the market place?

Here is a book by Michael J. Sandel, the Harvard political philosopher "What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets" which challenges the conventional wisdom and is a timely reminder that while the market place can allocate resources optimally, not all things need to be in the market place in the first place. 

Sandel examines the implications of living in a time when almost everything can be bought and sold and when market values drive not just all economic decision-making, but all aspects of our individual and collective lives, crowding out civic values, and corrupting our democracy in the process.

• A prison-cell upgrade: $90 a night. In Santa Ana, California, and some other cities, nonviolent offenders can pay for a clean, quiet jail cell, without any non-paying prisoners to disturb them.

• Access to the carpool lane while driving solo: $8. Minneapolis, San Diego, Houston, Seattle, and other cities have sought to ease traffic congestion by letting solo drivers pay to drive in carpool lanes, at rates that vary according to traffic.

• The services of an Indian surrogate mother: $8,000. Western couples seeking surrogates increasingly outsource the job to India, and the price is less than one-third the going rate in the United States.

• The right to shoot an endangered black rhino: $250,000. South Africa has begun letting some ranchers sell hunters the right to kill a limited number of rhinos, to give the ranchers an incentive to raise and protect the endangered species.

• Your doctor’s cellphone number: $1,500 and up per year. A growing number of “concierge” doctors offer cellphone access and same-day appointments for patients willing to pay annual fees ranging from $1,500 to $25,000.

• The right to emit a metric ton of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere: $10.50. The European Union runs a carbon-dioxide-emissions market that enables companies to buy and sell the right to pollute.

• The right to immigrate to the United States: $500,000. Foreigners who invest $500,000 and create at least 10 full-time jobs in an area of high unemployment are eligible for a green card that entitles them to permanent residency.

What worries Mr. Sandel is that, over the past 30 years, economic imperatives have begun crowding out all other values. He argues that we are steadily moving toward a culture in which our ideals are being pushed aside in favor of the view that we ought to always be maximizing efficiency.  He looks around America and observes all sorts of situations where traditional mores have shifted in recent years, always in the direction of market morality. Today you can purchase your way out of waiting in line for rides at many amusement parks. There are express lanes that allow you to buy our way out of traffic. Many schools now "incentivize" performance, paying students if they read books or do well in school; some schools now sell ads on children's report cards. Cities routinely sell advertising space on public property, ranging from parks and municipal buildings to police cars.  In each of these cases, long-held ideas about inherent worth and common ownership have been displaced by the simple morality of the market.

And it is not just that market values crowd out other values—once introduced, they tend to expand to the horizon. Take the history of "naming rights," the practice of a sports team selling the name of its stadium. In 1988, only three stadiums in the U.S. bore the names of corporate sponsors. By 2010, more than 100 companies were paying to put their name on an American sports facility. Individuals can now "rent" out space on their foreheads to companies for ads!

It seems nothing is beyond the market- not even death. In a grimly entertaining chapter on the history of life insurance, Mr. Sandel shows how a product that was once meant as a safety net for families has become a ghoulish investment vehicle. For centuries, life insurance was prohibited in most of Europe on the grounds that death should not be subject to speculation. In America, it wasn't until the 1850s that it began to gain legitimacy and then only as a product designed to protect a man's family in the case of his untimely death. But the morals of the market slowly overcame the old objections, and today companies routinely take out life-insurance policies on their employees because the policies are an excellent revenue stream, whether traded or held until collection. In recent years there has arisen an entire "life settlement" industry in which investors buy life-insurance policies from the elderly. The quicker people kick the bucket, the higher the rate of return for the investor. Ironically some of the pension funds become unwittingly the buyer of these investment vehicles!

Yet why should life settlement, or other market strategies, bother us? After all such practices maximize social utility and are the ultimate expansion of individual freedom. Proponents of market morality claim that it imposes no belief system. Choosing to place utility maximization at the core of your belief system is like choosing a guiding ideological precept. Every problem has an incentive-based solution; every tension can be resolved by seeking the maximally efficient outcome. Is it efficient? Will it make money? That's all the market cares about. 

But the good society needs to care about more. Doesn't it? Here are a few interesting questions that he raises:

• How do you feel about paying children to read books, or to get good grades?


• What are the ethics of paying people to test risky new drugs — or to donate their organs?


• What about hiring mercenaries to fight America’s wars?


• Or allowing cash-strapped communities to sell ads on police cars and fire hydrants?


• How about outsourcing inmates to privately owned prisons because it’s more cost-effective?


• Or allowing those who can afford it to buy special access to doctors?


• Or buying admission to elite universities when students with better grades are rejected?


• How about selling citizenship to immigrants willing to pay?


• Or allowing businesses to advertise inside our schools?


• Is it moral to put a price on human life to decide how much pollution to allow?


• What about buying other people’s life insurance policies to bet on when they’ll die — for profit?

These are all difficult questions and deserve to be disussed.  But the bigger question is why should we worry that we are moving toward a society in which everything is up for sale? Is there anything inherently wrong about a purely market based society?

Underlying the unease with this concept of a society where everything is for sale are two reasons. One is about inequality, the other about corruption. First, consider inequality. In a society where everything is for sale, life is harder for those of modest means. The more money can buy, the more affluence—or the lack of it—matters. If the only advantage of affluence were the ability to afford yachts, sports cars, and fancy vacations, inequalities of income and wealth would matter less than they do today. But as money comes to buy more and more, the distribution of income and wealth looms larger and pervades all walks of life and living.

The second reason we should hesitate to put everything up for sale is more difficult to describe. It is not about inequality and fairness but about the corrosive tendency of markets. Putting a price on the good things in life can corrupt them. That’s because markets don’t only allocate goods; they express and promote certain attitudes toward the goods being exchanged. Paying kids to read books might get them to read more, but might also teach them to regard reading as a chore rather than a source of intrinsic satisfaction. Hiring foreign mercenaries to fight our wars might spare the lives of our citizens, but might also corrupt the meaning of citizenship.

For in the final analysis, Sandel reminds us: “the question about the role of markets is really a question about how we want to live together. Do we want a society where everything is up for sale? Or are there certain moral and civic goods that markets do not honor and money cannot buy? If so, how can we prevent market values from reaching into spheres of life where they don't belong? What are the moral limits of markets?”