Books - What money can´t buy - by Michael Sandel - Market sends moral messages as well as price signals

What money can’t buy

Michael Cook

What is the proper role of money and markets in a democratic society? 

How can we protect the priceless goods in moral and civic life 

from being bought and sold?

Does everything have a price? Sometimes you might think so.

In the US, egg donation agencies will pay college women between US$5,000 and $50,000 for their eggs. The price rises with their SAT scores, the institution they attend, and their attractiveness.

Ten years ago, if you were really hard up, you could make a quick buck by posing as a human billboard. Karolyne Smith sold the advertising space above her eyebrows to an online casino, GoldenPalace.com, so that she could finance her child's schooling. Now she has to wear bangs to hide the disfiguring tattoo.

At the height of the AIDS epidemic, investors discovered the profitability of financial instruments called viaticals. They would buy a US$100,000 life insurance policy from a dying AIDS patient for $50,000. If the patient died in a year, they would make a 100 percent profit. Of course, if he lingered on, the rate of return declined steeply, so investors had to pray for an early death. Retrovirals killed this sector of the market because AIDS patients started to survive.

Is there anything wrong with transactions like these? In his latest book, What Money Can’t Buy, about the moral limits of markets Harvard professor Michael J. Sandel argues that there is..................

Read more: www.mercatornet.com

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In Economists We Trust

We are a society built on market-based solutions

—but should everything have a price?

By JONATHAN V. LAST

Economists don't really like presents. They think they are irrational. No gift giver can know what another person wants most, and any present is just a wasteful approximation. The only gift anyone should ever give is cash. It is optimally efficient.

Michael J. Sandel, the Harvard political philosopher, takes a different tack in "What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets." He argues that while giving a present may not make much economic sense, it is perfectly sensible in terms of our cultural values. There are social ethics that have long marked the practice, maximizing sympathy, generosity, thoughtfulness and attentiveness. The optimal value, despite what the economists tell us, isn't always the most efficient one.

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Read more: online.wsj.com