Week 10- Post 1: What Money Can't Buy (markets and morals)

Sources: https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/markets_and_moral_limits

https://www.ted.com/talks/michael_sandel_why_we_shouldn_t_trust_markets_with_our_civic_life/transcript?language=en

Markets and Moral Limits

should you pay your kids to read a book? should prisoners be able to pay to upgrade their accomadations? should someone be allowed to pay for the right to shoot an endangered black rhino?
in order to decide what money should or should not be able to buy, we have to decide what values should govern various aspects of social and civic life
buying and selling increasingly governs the whole of life

has become normal in society to accept/assume that nearly everything is for sale

inequality: in a society where eveyrhting is for sale, life is easier for those with lots of money, because money can be used to buy more than just stuff (it can buy political influence, superior medical care, safe neighborhoods, access to elite schools)
corruption: putting a price on the good things in life can corrupt the goods themselves, because markets don’t just allocate goods, they express and promote certain attitudes towards those goods (for example if you pay kids to read it might get them to do it more but now theyre going to see it as work instead of something enjoyable they do on their own)

the amrket isnt predictable, sometimes marketizing something can change its meaning
for example, when a daycare center charged no fee if parents were late, very few parents showed up late. with the goal of creating a disincentive for tardiness, the center decided to set a fee when parents arrived late. however, the incentive backfired. what ensued was a huge increase in late parents, who instead of feeling a moral obligation to arrive on time and spare teachers an inconvenience, now saw their relationship with the school in market terms: late arrivers could simply pay teachers for the service of staying after school.

theres no easy answer for how to decide which goods should be bought and sold and which should be governed by nonmarket values.

Why we shouldn't trust markets with our civil life TED Talk- Michael Sandel

if your sentenced to a jail term in Santa Barbara, California, you can buy a prison cell upgrade for $82 a night.
if you go to an amusement park and dont want to stand in long lines, you can pay extra to jump to ahead of the line (fasttrack/vip tickets)
in washington d.c., long lines form for congressional hearings. now, for people who like to attend these hearings but dont like waiting in long queues, there are line-standing companies you can pay for, who hire homeless people and others who neeed a job to wait in line for however long it takes, and right before the hearing begins the person can take their place at the front of the line. paid line standing.

take the way we fight our wars. in iraq and afghanistan there were more private military contractors on the ground than u.s. military troops.

this isnt because we had a public debate about whether we wanted to outsource war to private companies, this is just what happened

market economy: a valuable and effective tool for organizing productive activity
market society: a place where almost everything is up for sale. its a way of life, in which market thinking and market values begin to dominate every aspect of life: personal relations, family life, health, education, politics, law, civic life

inequality: the more things money can buy, the more affluence/lack of it, matters. if the only thing money determined was access to yachts, BMWs, fancy vacations, then inequality would be less of a problem but when money comes to govern access to the essentials of a good life (good health care, good education, policital voice/influence in campaigns) inequality is more of a problem. so the marketization of everything only sharpens the sting of inequality and social/civic consequence
the new meaning marketization brings to something: cash incentives. many schools struggle with the challenge of motivating kids, especially kids from disadvantaged backgrounds, to apply themselves/study hard and do well in school. so some economists proposed a market solution: offer cash incentives to kids for getting good grades/high test scores/reading books. they did experiments in NY, Chicago, Washington DC, they offered $50 for an A, 35$ for a B. In Texas they have a program that offers 8 yr olds $2 for every book they read.

majority of audience oppose, a good amount are in favor though
No: paying them takes away the intinsric motivation
Yes: worth a try, see hwo many books they read and how many books they read after you stop paying them
No: this is a very american way

this debate brings out something that economists overlook: the way market exchange changes the meaning/value of the goods being exchanged

they assume that markets are inert and do not touch/taint the goods they exchange

this may be true if we're talking about material goods. if you sell me a TV or give me one as a gift, it will be the same good. it will work the same either way
but the same is not true if were talking about nonmaterial goods and social practices like teaching and learning or engaging together in civic life.

in these types of domains, bringing market mechanisms and cash incentives may undermine or crowd out nonmarket values and attitudes worth caring about

once we see that that markets and commerce, when extended beyond the material domain, can change the meaning of the social practices, as in the example of teaching and learning, we have to ask where markets belong and where they dont.
these are controversial questions so we tend to shrink from them.

one of the most corrosive effects of putting a price on everything is commonality, the sense that we are all in it together. against the background of inequality, marketizing everything leads to a condition where those who are affluent and those who are of modest means increasingly live seperate lives. we live and work and shop and play in different places, children go to different schools.

this isnt good for democracy. democracy doesnt require perfect equality but it requires that citizens share in a common life. what matter is that poeple of different social backgrounds encounter one another in the ordinary course of life because this is what teaches us to negotiate and to abide our differences. an this is how we come to care for the common good.

in the end. the question of markets is not mainly an economic question, its really a questions of 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?

Maazza- Moral and Political Philosophy in Justice