What Money Shouldn’t Buy

Adam Smith, in The Wealth of Nations from 1776, observed that we get our dinner not from the butcher’s kindness but from his interest in trade. Markets let strangers cooperate, each pursuing their own gain, in ways that can benefit everyone. But Smith also wrote The Theory of Moral Sentiments, on sympathy and conscience, and assumed markets work within a moral community.

Michael Sandel, in What Money Can’t Buy from 2012, argues that markets have spread into areas where they change the goods themselves. Paying children to read may teach them to read for money rather than love of books. Selling places in queues, citizenship or organs raises questions of fairness and of corruption: some things are degraded by being treated as commodities.

Defenders of markets reply that voluntary exchange respects freedom and often helps the poor.

The reading prize

A school pays students two dollars for every book they read. Reading goes up at first. Teachers notice students choosing the shortest books and losing interest once the payments end.

A librarian proposes instead a reading club where students choose books and talk about them. Fewer books are read in the first month, but more students keep reading. The payment had changed what reading meant to them.

Try this today Name one thing you think should never be for sale. Ask what would change about it if it were bought and sold.