What Money Can't Buy

Michael Sandel. Allen Lane. Again, possibly the philosophers of our times, Michael Sandel, forces us to take a look at facets of our lives. After the success of the bookJustice, What Money Cant Buypushes us to reevaluate study values attitudes and norms which govern civic and social life. Although many people seem bothered by commodification of facets of life, we all have a propensity to take it so as to avert a debate. Like pertinent philosophers before him, Michael Sandel is currently trying difficult to reform us and turn us into participants in the shaping of life from acquiescent people.


He pushes us debate them without deflecting from the significance of morality and to voice our concerns. What Money Cant Purchase seems at the consequences for a society where everything is available and where market economics is used to devote everything from health to justice and public safety. Michael Sandel provides examples from different US nations: in California a non violent offender may pay for a prison cell upgrade, in different nations individual drivers can pay for use of car pool lanes, 24\/7 access to your doctorcan be bought for $1500 a year and above, admission of your child to a top US university, fast track at airport security, paying for people to stand in line for you to attend a Congressional hearing.

The problem is compounded further when markets are no longer inert. What commodification does is create a greater inequality and more powerful possibility of corruption by not just putting price on goods, but additionally altering attitudes toward certain type of goods. The book suggests that if markets at social goods are no longer inert, a few of the good things at life are corrupt and we've debased their ethical value and by it jeopardized the existence of orderly society.

This, at turn, raises the need into look closely at these goods and attempt to find various ways to value them without strip them of their ethical or political value. The argument raised by this book is forcing us into recognize that civic duty might not be treated as private property and as such can't be given monetary value.