What Money Can T Buy Chapter Summaries

What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets:

Non-Fiction Assignment

What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets by Michael J. Sandel is a fascinating book, which examines the ways in which we have moved from having a market economy to having a market society. The Harvard professor argues that our world is one in which everything is now for sale, and questions whether this approach to daily life is truly ethical. The book is divided into 5 sections, each examining an area where markets have encroached on morals: jumping the queue, incentives, how markets crowd out morals, markets in life and death, and naming rights. The sections cover everything from airports, amusement parks and carpool lanes to Springsteen concerts; cash for

He argues that without even realizing it, we have drifted from having a market economy to being a market society. “Over the past three decades”, he writes, “markets - and market values - have come to govern our lives as never before”. It’s important to note, however, that Sandel is not a socialist - far from it, he is a proponent of using markets to better lives in almost every aspect. He goes on to write, “No other mechanism for organizing the production and distribution of goods had proved as successful for generating affluence and prosperity”. His concern is how markets have come to govern, and therefore taint, our morals: “The most fateful change that unfolded in the last three decades was not an increase in greed. It was the expansion of markets, and of market values, into spheres of life where they don’t

Most of the statistics and examples Sandel falls back on, though, are American. He does, however, often reference the problems he sees in other market societies as well - for example, abuses of the fines imposed on couples who have more than one child in China. He uses these other countries as examples for the States as either ideals they should strive for or horrors they should avoid. It is also important to note that the book was published in 2012, close on the heels of the recession, and his arguments are often taken from incidents and attitude shifts that happened during the