Mind the Economy/Justice 105

What money cannot buy

"There are some things that money cannot buy, though not many these days."

18 May 2025

MICHAEL SANDEL FILOSOFO PROFESSOR HARVARD UNIVERSITY

9' min read

"There are some things that money can't buy, though not many these days". So writes Michael Sandel in the fulminating opening of his What Money Can't Buy. The Moral Limits of Markets (2012). And he continues with a non-exhaustive list of things that are for sale even though they probably shouldn't be: More comfortable cells in a prison, access to emergency lanes during traffic hours, surrogate mothers in various nations around the globe, permanent residence permits in the United States, the ability to kill an endangered rhino, the right to emit polluting gases, the time of a person to stand in line for you, the forehead of those willing to get an advertisement tattooed, the private number of a doctor you can call any day, any time. It is even possible to buy life insurance on the life of a terminally ill person in the hope of being able to collect it as soon as possible upon the latter's death.

They are not provocations. They are symptoms of an age," Sandel tells us, "ours, in which market logic is no longer one tool among others but the dominant metric of social life, 'the cornerstone of modern societies' as Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner proudly write in their Freakonomics. The Calculus of the Incalculable (2010). Sandel's diagnosis is as sobering as it is alarming: we have entered what can properly be called a 'market society', a cultural horizon where truly everything has a price. "So what? - one might legitimately ask - what's the problem?" The problem is that," Sandel continues, "our reluctance to engage in moral and spiritual argumentation, along with our adherence to markets, has come at a high cost: it has drained the public debate of moral and civic energy and contributed to the managerial and technocratic policies that afflict many societies today.

That is why it is necessary to start asking explicitly and systematically how the meaning of things changes when we start treating them as commodities. Even the research of economists, on this point, is beginning to agree: blood, for example, when donated voluntarily, instead of sold, is more abundant and of better quality. Personal relationships, even in the workplace, only have true value if they arise and develop outside the logic of exchange. Sentimental and intimate relationships when they take place against payment naturally become something else. Any prize, just like a degree, if bought, totally loses its original meaning. This is what Fred Hirsch called the 'commercialisation effect'. The effect, that is, that manifests itself on the characteristics of an activity or product when these are offered exclusively or predominantly in commercial terms rather than on the basis of informal exchange, mutual obligation, altruism or love.

This effect stems from the fact that markets are not neutral places. They are not just 'efficient allocation mechanisms'. They express and promote certain norms and values, which often compete with those in other areas of life: gratuitousness, honour, respect, trust. Thus, putting goods that have a moral and civic dimension up for sale risks deforming their nature and emptying them of their original meaning. In a controversial study published in Science in 2013, Armin Falk and Nora Szech confronted participants with a rather complicated real-life choice: accept a sum of money to let a lab rat die or give up the money and save its life. The choice was made by different groups under different conditions: an individual decision, where the choice was limited to accepting or rejecting the sum offered, or a market choice where the sum was negotiated in a bilateral auction by the individual participants. In the latter case, participants negotiated in a simulated market with another party and had to agree on a price to sell the rat's life or save it. The results of the experiment show that in the individual context, the majority of subjects refuse money in order not to cause the death of the animal. In the market context, on the other hand, many more participants are willing to sacrifice the life of the mouse in exchange for the same or a smaller sum.

People, according to Falk and Szech's study, are less inclined to avoid moral injury when they act in a market exchange context. In practice, market mechanisms seem to 'dilute' individual responsibility: by negotiating, one also negotiates with one's conscience. A result that challenges the classical idea of the market as a simple instrument of efficiency, morally neutral. The efficiency paradox is then revealed in all its ambiguity: economically incentivising a behaviour can reduce its value. This is the phenomenon of 'motivational crowding-out'.

Sandel explains this by resorting to another famous experiment conducted by Uri Gneezy and Aldo Rustichini. The two economists studied kindergartens in which the parents of the children systematically arrived late. Gneezy and Rustichini, in agreement with the kindergarten management, decided to test the deterrent effect of a fine. To test the impact of the new policy they applied it to six of the ten kindergartens involved by observing for twenty weeks the differences in parental behaviour in the kindergartens with and without the fine. While in the latter the number of latecomers remained unchanged, in the kindergartens with the fine, the number, instead of decreasing, as the two economists expected, increased significantly. Why? Because behaviour that was previously governed by a moral norm, effective though imperfect, of respect and responsibility, was now framed in a logic of commercial exchange: 'You make me pay for being late? And I buy it'. Now, after the introduction of the fine, one could pay for breaking the rule without even feeling guilty, and many parents who had previously felt obliged to observe the timetable by a relationship of respect for the teachers and teachers, could now choose to buy that tardiness that was put on sale by the kindergartens themselves.

But in addition to the practical aspects and unwelcome consequences, Sandel's critique of the logic of universal commercialisation is based on two fundamental objections: that of 'fairness' and that of 'corruption'. The first concerns structural inequalities: in a world where few have much and many have little, what appears as a free choice is often a constraint in disguise. Can we really say that a desperate unemployed person selling a kidney to get something to feed his children is really a party to a free trade? Do we remember Giovanni Alberti the character in Vittorio De Sica's film, Il Boom, played by Alberto Sordi?

But it is the second objection, that of corruption, that offers the most original insight into Sandel's argument. Some goods, he argues, change in nature when they are treated as commodities. It is not enough to ensure a level playing field: even in a perfectly just society, some things should neither be bought nor sold, as a matter of principle: a child carried for nine months and given birth, admission to university, citizenship. All these practices fundamentally alter the very nature of what is sold and bought. 'We often,' Sandel writes, 'associate corruption with illicit payments to public officials. But, as we saw in chapter one, corruption also has a broader meaning: we corrupt a good, activity or social practice whenever we treat it according to a lower standard than is appropriate to it. Thus, to take an extreme example, procreating to sell one's children for profit is a corruption of parenthood, because it treats children as things to be used rather than as creatures to be loved. Political corruption can be seen in the same light: when a judge accepts a bribe to deliver a corrupt verdict, he acts as if his judicial authority is an instrument of personal gain rather than a fiduciary office in the public interest. He degrades and demeans his office by treating it according to a lower standard than is appropriate to it'.

We therefore need to rethink the role that market logic plays in our lives, in our societies. And rethinking the role of markets does not mean denying their usefulness, but reflecting on their limitations. We did not decide to live in a society where everything is for sale, Sandel reminds us, we got there by inertia, by stopping to ask ourselves if it was right. Because 'a market economy is a useful tool', he writes, whereas 'a market society is a way of life'. The transition from one thing to another marks an anthropological change. When even the most intimate relationships, such as motherhood, become the object of a contract - as in the case of Indian surrogate mothers paid for by Western couples - not only do we change the rules of the economy, but we change ourselves. What about the private financing of election campaigns in the US that has made voting an almost negotiable commodity? Remember Musk and his millionaire lotteries? And so does citizenship. If you invest five hundred thousand dollars and create a few jobs you're welcome, otherwise we kick you out with handcuffs on your wrists on live TV. Those who can pay, can belong, the others away. Can we still call it citizenship?

A serious and in-depth debate on the moral limits of markets, Sandel is convinced, could enable us as a society to decide where markets serve the common good and where they should not be allowed to operate. It is not a matter of prohibition, but of discernment. We need to ask ourselves: what does it mean to educate, to care, to protect? And what happens when these activities are turned into paid services? For example: will paying children to read encourage them to read more, but make them better readers? Will selling college places bring more resources, but erase the meaning of merit?

Sandel's book has provoked many different reactions. Among the most relevant is certainly the one that Luigino Bruni and Robert Sugden propose in their essay "Reclaiming Virtue Ethics for Economics" (Journal of Economic Perspectives 27, pp. 141-164, 2013). While appreciating Sandel's attempt to reintroduce moral discussion into the field of economic theory, the two authors highlight the paternalistic character of his proposal and an objectivist conception of morality that is difficult to reconcile with a democratic and pluralist society.

According to Bruni and Sugden, in fact, Sandel constructs his critique from the idea that there are moral goods that are intrinsically 'corrupted' by market logic. But in doing so, they argue, he ascribes a fixed and universal moral nature to those goods, as if their meaning were given once and for all, and not historically or culturally determined. Sandel assumes that there are virtuous practices that must be defended against the contamination of money, but offers no clear, intersubjective criteria for deciding what these practices are. The heart of their critique refers to the fact that the Harvard philosopher's approach leads to the replacement of individual responsibility with a civic paternalism. Instead of asking how people can develop a moral conscience within markets, Sandel prefers to define from the outside the contexts in which market logic should be banished. But doing so, Bruni and Sugden observe, denies the possibility for individuals to exercise their moral freedom even within economic relations. This is problematic for at least two reasons.

Firstly, because it constitutes a limit to personal responsibility. If it is the state or the expert who decides what is corrupt and what is not, one deprives the citizen of the possibility of growing, of forming morally, of making mistakes, of practising virtue. Secondly, this approach assumes the existence of a single ethic. In pluralist societies, there is no consensus on what constitutes a 'pure' good. The Indian surrogate mother may see her act as a form of family care, not exploitation. The young person who accepts payment for reading may be motivated by money, without this necessarily debasing his love of books. For Bruni and Sugden there is certainly a need to redeem virtue ethics, but as a basis for a 'non-perfectionist' view of economics. It is not a matter of excluding the market in order to protect moral values, but of building economic institutions that incentivise and make these virtues viable. We should not so much ask when and how the market 'corrupts' moral goods, but rather how we can build markets that foster responsibility, generosity, and cooperation. Because while it is true that the phenomenon of motivational crowding-out exists and is well documented, it is also true that monetary incentive can in some cases support rather than erode moral motivation. Rewarding children for reading can make them discover the pleasure of reading, paving the way for a lasting love of books. Similarly, paying blood does not necessarily make it less pure, if the incentive is set in an appropriate ethical and relational framework. In Italy we have one of the most generous incentives to donate blood - a day off work - and it works very well since donations have increased and the majority take place on Friday mornings.

Bruni and Sugden's perspective is thus less normatively rigid and more pragmatic than Sandel's: creating markets that cultivate virtue, rather than excluding the market every time it comes into contact with a sensitive good. In this view, the fundamental difference between Sandel's and Bruni's and Sugden's positions lies in their belief in the moral maturity of people and the intrinsic value of freedom. Sandel fears that the economy destroys the moral fabric. Bruni and Sugden hope that well-designed institutions and economic rules can sustain that fabric, without suffocating it. Sandel's response to this criticism refers to the fact that reasoning together about which goods should be regulated by market logic and which should not, does not mean imposing a moral vision from above, but revitalising the democratic debate on the good life. And it is precisely this, perhaps, that is the most urgent lesson of his book: that justice, freedom and dignity cannot be defended with the formulas of efficiency or neutrality alone, but need a voice, a narrative, an ethics of shared meaning.

Regardless of the merits of either position, at a time when public discussion fails to move beyond issues of efficiency and growth, recognising that the market can also be the place where our civic virtues are forged or eroded represents a decisive step forward.