Markets without Limits
Moral Virtues and Commercial Interests
Jason F. Brennan, Peter Jaworski
- 348 pagine
- English
- ePUB (disponibile sull'app)
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Markets without Limits
Moral Virtues and Commercial Interests
Jason F. Brennan, Peter Jaworski
Informazioni sul libro
May you sell your spare kidney? May gay men pay surrogates to bear them children? Should we allow betting markets on terrorist attacks and natural disasters? May spouses pay each other to do the dishes, watch the kids, or have sex? Should we allow the rich to genetically engineer gifted, beautiful children? May you ever sell your vote?
Most people—and many philosophers—shudder at these questions. To put some goods and services for sale offends human dignity. If everything is commodified, then nothing is sacred. The market corrodes our character.
In this expanded second edition of Markets without Limits, Jason Brennan and Peter M. Jaworski say it is now past time to give markets a fair hearing. The market does not, the authors claim, introduce wrongness where there was not any previously. Thus, the question of what rightfully may be bought and sold has a simple answer: if you may do it for free, you may do it for money. Contrary to the conservative consensus, Brennan and Jaworski claim there are no inherent limits to what can be bought and sold, but only restrictions on how we buy and sell.
Key Updates and Revisions to the Second Edition:
- Includes revised introductory chapters to further clarify what's at stake in the commodification debate.
- Provides easier-to-follow chapters on semiotic objections, stronger analyses of these objections, and more evidence of these objections' widespread pervasiveness.
- Offers cogent responses to several recent papers that have raised counterexamples to the authors' thesis.
- Includes new empirical evidence on the ways markets sometimes crowd in virtue and altruism.
- Analyzes the topics of blackmail and "associative" objections to markets.
- Includes new material on issues surrounding exploitation and coercion, selling citizenship, residency rights, and arguments about "dignity" as objections to markets.
Domande frequenti
Informazioni
PART I SHOULD EVERYTHING BE FOR SALE?
… modern civilization has become largely possible by the disregard of the injunctions of those indignant moralists.—F.A. Hayek
1 ARE THERE SOME THINGS MONEY SHOULD NOT BUY?
THE DEBATE’S OVER, AND MARKETS WON, BUT …
… imagine for a second this last global recession but without the economic growth of China and India … without the hundreds of millions of newly minted middle class folks who buy American and European goods … Imagine that. Think about the last five years.Rock star preaches capitalism. Shocker. Wow. Sometimes I hear myself and I just can’t believe it …But commerce is real. That’s what you’re about here. It’s real. Aid is just a stub cap. Commerce, entrepreneurial capitalism takes more people out of poverty than aid, of course, we know that.5
SO, WHICH MARKET SOCIETY?
- 1. How much should governments intervene in and regulate the market?
- 2. What sorts of property-rights regimes and background legal institutions are best?
- 3. How much should governments provide social insurance or other welfare programs to protect citizens from misfortune on the market?
- 4. What sorts of things should be and should not be for sale?
NOXIOUS MARKETS?
- Human Billboards: In Tokyo, the PR firm Wit Inc. paid young women $121/day to wear sticker advertisements on their thighs as they go about their days. The women must be young, popular, thin, and pretty. They agree to wear short skirts or shorts. Wit’s CEO explains, “It’s an absolutely perfect place to put an advertisement, as this is what guys are eager to look at and girls are eager to expose.”11
- Watch My GF: In the United States and elsewhere, one can purchase subscriptions to websites that collect nude or sexual videos men have submitted of their current or ex-girlfriends. These pictures were meant to be private; the women intended only for their then-current boyfriends to see them. Sometimes men submit these videos to humiliate their exes. (It’s called “revenge porn.”) Some of these websites instead have user agreements that require the people in the videos to authenticate themselves and consent for the videos to be posted.
- Prostitution: Of course, rather than looking at pictures, you can always buy sex. For example, as of 2021, readers can search www.yesbackpage.com to find sexual services in their area. (Yesbackpage.com replaces backpage.com, which was seized by the FBI.)
- What’s Your Price? WhatsYourPrice.com is a dating website in which users pay other users to go on first dates with them. A 22-year-old college student Vva33, who posted a picture of herself emerging from a pool in a little black bikini, tells men that she “won’t meet for less than $300” as she gets “too many higher offers.” Related websites promise to help match would-be “sugar daddies” with would-be “sugar babies.” Out of curiosity, back in 2014, we created a fake profile of a heterosexual male who is a partner in an architecture firm and loves outdoor sports. Our fake architect immediately received a $200 offer for a first date with an attractive professional woman.
- Wigs: Hair extensions and wigs are often made from real human hair. This hair frequently comes from poor women in the third world, many of whom sell “their treasured asset[s]” because they have few options.12
- The Other Express Lane: In airports queues, not everyone is equal. For a long time, first-class passengers have been able to use a separate line, cutting ahead of everyone else. The Transportation Security Administration now sells expedited security access through its PreCheck and Global Entry programs. Some airlines continue to sell line-cutting rights for security queues or for flight boarding.
- Human Eggs and Pregnancy Surrogacy: When Brennan was in college, an infertile couple ran an ad in his university’s newspaper offering to buy an egg from a tall, blonde, blue-eyed woman for $25,000. Relatedly, one of Brennan’s gay friends and his partner paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to produce their two children. They purchased eggs from one woman and paid a different woman to carry the fertilized eggs for them. They also paid this second woman for her breast milk.
- The Greatest Movie Ever Sold: Why does fictional billionaire Tony Stark (aka Iron Man) drive an Audi rather than, say, an Aston Martin or a Bugatti? Simple: Audi paid to have its products placed within the film. In fact, in any high-budget summer film from Hollywood, if you can see the logo or brand of the product the characters use, chances are, you’re viewing a paid product placement.
- Payola: Sometimes the music on the radio is itself the placed product. Record companies sometimes pay radio stations to broadcast music signals. In the United States, this is legal so long as the radio station discloses that the song is sponsored, but this rule is difficult to enforce, and many radio stations do not disclose that they received money.
- Pay for Grades: Following the work of economist Roland Fryer, some school systems are experimenting with paying underperforming students for good grades.
NOXIOUS POTENTIAL MARKETS?
- Tiger Farming: Tigers are nearly extinct. A large part of the problem is that hunters poach tigers for their fur. Laws against poaching and trade in tiger pelts fail to stop the problem—it’s just too difficult to stop poachers and the black-market tiger trade. This raises the question: In order to save tigers from extinction, should governments allow tiger farming? That is, should governments allow private farmers to raise and slaughter tigers for their fur, just as they allow ranchers to raise cattle for meat and leather or rabbits for their pelts? Defenders of tiger farming say that there is no moral distinction between pigs and tigers—if one may be farmed, so may the other—but allowing tiger farming would remove the economic incentives behind poaching and thus prevent extinction in the wild.
- Betting on Terror: In the early 2000s, following the work of many economists on the predictive power of information markets, the Pentagon considered creating a Policy Analysis Market (PAM). These information markets would have allowed people to bet on when certain events would occur, such as terrorist strikes or certain kinds of conflict in the Middle East. The markets are designed such that the market price of a bid indicates the probability that an event will occur (e.g., $.87/share on a bet that terrorists will attack Boston tomorrow = 87% chance that terrorists will attack Boston). Defenders of PAM believe the Pentagon, CIA, and other agencies would in turn have used this information to save lives.
WE ARE THE CRITICS’ CRITICS
Indice dei contenuti
- Cover Page
- Half-Title Page
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Dedication Page
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Part I Should Everything Be for Sale?
- Part II Do Markets Signal Disrespect?
- Part III Do Markets Corrupt?
- Part IV The Other Big Objections
- Part V Debunking Intuitions
- Bibliography
- Index