Great review of Michael Sandel's new book What Money Can’t Buy: the Moral Limits of Markets
Sandel makes clear that he is by no means opposed to the market economy, which he recognizes as the most successful wealth-generating system yet devised. What troubles him is that we have “drifted from having a market economy to being a market society.” The distinction is crucial: a market economy is simply a mechanism for the efficient allocation of resources, but a market society is nothing less than a way of life organized upon the basis of market reasoning and morality.
In its free-market incarnation, economic science has expanded far beyond its traditional preoccupations with issues such as inflation, unemployment, savings ratios, investment levels, and trade balances in order to claim explanatory power across the full range of human activity. As a result of its increasing intellectual and political influence, we are witnessing “the remaking of social relations in the image of market relations.” But Sandel argues that market reasoning and its inherent market morality are not equally appropriate to all domains. In some cases, it may be objectionable or even unacceptable. So Sandel challenges us to morally reevaluate market society, and the central question he poses in this book is “Where should money’s writ not run?”
Sandel advances two fundamental objections to free-market theory: inequality and corruption. From Sandel’s perspective, the inequality of income and wealth is substantially unimportant when the scope of the market is restricted to consumer goods such as luxury cars, foreign vacations, or yachts. But in a market society characterized by expansive and intrusive commercialization, inequality takes on an altogether more pernicious significance; when it is the ability to pay that determines access to medical care, non-failing schools, safe neighborhoods, or political influence, then the social fabric is torn.
Sandel makes clear that he is by no means opposed to the market economy, which he recognizes as the most successful wealth-generating system yet devised. What troubles him is that we have “drifted from having a market economy to being a market society.” The distinction is crucial: a market economy is simply a mechanism for the efficient allocation of resources, but a market society is nothing less than a way of life organized upon the basis of market reasoning and morality.
In its free-market incarnation, economic science has expanded far beyond its traditional preoccupations with issues such as inflation, unemployment, savings ratios, investment levels, and trade balances in order to claim explanatory power across the full range of human activity. As a result of its increasing intellectual and political influence, we are witnessing “the remaking of social relations in the image of market relations.” But Sandel argues that market reasoning and its inherent market morality are not equally appropriate to all domains. In some cases, it may be objectionable or even unacceptable. So Sandel challenges us to morally reevaluate market society, and the central question he poses in this book is “Where should money’s writ not run?”
Sandel advances two fundamental objections to free-market theory: inequality and corruption. From Sandel’s perspective, the inequality of income and wealth is substantially unimportant when the scope of the market is restricted to consumer goods such as luxury cars, foreign vacations, or yachts. But in a market society characterized by expansive and intrusive commercialization, inequality takes on an altogether more pernicious significance; when it is the ability to pay that determines access to medical care, non-failing schools, safe neighborhoods, or political influence, then the social fabric is torn.
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