What Money Can't Buy

WHAT MONEY CAN’T BUY by Harvard University’s Michael Sandel, the New York Times bestselling author of JUSTICE, is a timely look at the relationship between markets and morals, a book that asks fundamental questions about the reach of markets into our daily lives.

Clear and compelling, WHAT MONEY CAN’T BUY offers readers the same immersive experience of moral philosophy as JUSTICE, a quality that also defines Sandel’s enormously popular public lectures. Covering all aspects of life—from health to education, public safety to national security, criminal justice, environmental protection, sports and art, family life and personal relationships—Sandel delves into the difficult arguments missing from our public debates about the value being assigned by markets to nonmarket norms.

Sandel argues that markets have come to define our lives as never before, with inequality and corruption standing out as crucial concerns. The marketisation of society leads to a greater divide between people of means and those without; putting a price on things such as children, the environment, and citizenship can corrupt their value. Neither is good for democracy and both are products of our having drifted from having a market economy to being a market society.

To explore these concerns, Sandel leads us thoughtfully through numerous questions, among them: Should we pay children to read books or to get good grades? Is it ethical to pay people to be sterilised or to donate their organs? Should lobbyists be allowed to pay someone to stand in line for hearings and should people be able to buy other people’s life insurance? Should companies be allowed to advertise in our schools and prisons? Should it be possible to buy citizenship, access to doctors, or admittance to elite universities?

“The problem with our politics,” Sandel writes, “is not too much moral argument but too little … A debate about the moral limits of markets would enable us to decide, as a society, where markets serve the public good and where they don’t belong … The question of markets is really a question about 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 honour and money cannot buy?”

About the author
Michael J. Sandel is the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of Government at Harvard University. His legendary 'Justice' course is the first Harvard course made freely available online (www.JusticeHarvard.org) and on television and has attracted millions of viewers. His work has been translated into 15 languages and been the subject of television series in the U.K., the U.S., Japan, South Korea, Sweden, and the Middle East. He has delivered the Tanner Lectures at Oxford and been a visiting professor at the Sorbonne, Paris. In 2010, China Newsweek named him the "most influential foreign figure of the year" in China. Sandel was the 2009 BBC Reith Lecturer, and his most recent book Justice is an international bestseller. In April 2012 he will present a three-part Radio 4 series ‘The Public Philosopher’.