What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets (Close Reading)

This month, join us in reading Michael Sandel's “What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets” where he argues that the expansion of market values into all aspects of life is corrupting and diminishes non-market norms and civic goods.

“Some of the good things in life are corrupted or degraded if turned into commodities. So to decide where the market belongs, and where it should be kept at a distance, we have to decide how to value the goods in question–health, education, family life, nature, art, civic duty, and so on. These are moral and political questions, not merely economic ones. To resolve them, we have to debate, case by case, the moral meaning of these goods and the proper way of valuing them.

Without quite realizing it, without ever deciding to do so, we have drifted from having a market economy to being a market society…It’s a place where social relations are made over in the image of the market.”

Join us for a discussion about viatical markets, organ markets, jumping the queue, and so much more.