What is a Market Society? What Money Should Not Buy

Note: Do order a drink, tea, coffee or food when attending this event in support of Royal Oak for letting us use the Roxy Room. Please arrive at 6:45pm to order your drinks/food so that we can start the event at 7pm with minimum interruption. Thank you.

More and more, we live in a society where almost everything has a monetary price; you can just about buy anything under the sun (except escape from death…for now). It has always been this way, but now more so than any other time in history. Monetary Incentives are ubiquitous and seeping into areas where money were not a factor.

For example, many parents pay their kids cash to clean their bedrooms & do their homework, for eating broccoli and writing thank you notes, all in the hope of creating good habits and learning to do the right things. In Chicago, some schools pay cash to students for each book read. We pay first class airline tickets to skip lineups and pay thousands of $ for executive sports box seats (no lineup for bathrooms there). C.R.A.C.K, is a charity in the U.S that offers $300 to drug addicted women to have sterilization.

Speaking of death, it was alleged that Ford car company, in 1973, during the Pinto rear engine explosion debacle, estimated the cost of a human life as worth $200,000. How much do you think a life should be worth?

In some countries, you can rent a boyfriend/girlfriend/companion for a day or weekend to get your family off your back. You can also rent a womb to give birth to your baby. It’s illegal in most countries but you can buy a working organ (in some countries from some poor individual) for transplant. We pay to jump queues, avoid justice; as long as you pay a large amount of money, you can have the license to kill endangered species, buy politicians and influence government policies.

Pro sports venues change their names for a price; which hockey rinks are more iconic, Canadian Tire, Rogers Centre or Madison Square Gardens and Maple Leaf Garden? Which pro team plays at Yankee Stadium and which pro team at Target Field?

On January 13th, we shall discuss whether everything in life should have a financial price? We shall make the distinction between a market economy and a market society. We shall explore how our children might be affected growing up being paid to read and clean up their bedrooms or help their parents do chores around the house; What will happen to volunteerism? What will happen to public goods; should education, health care, the Police, fire departments, government institutions, roads, be privatized, become profit centres?

Why can't we buy anything we can if we have the means to do so in a democracy? Why shouldn't money be a motivator for good deeds?

Should money be the solution to everything and everything valuable is for sale? Is our morality for sale? What are the unintended consequences (or maybe the intentional consequences) of a market society? Will it lead to corruption and inequality become openly acceptable? If so, how will this affect Democracy? What should be the role of money and markets in our society? What in life will you not put a price on? What are the moral limits of markets?

"Money has no morality. Money comes and goes but morality comes and grows."