Michael J. Sandel Warns Market Society Risks America's Soul

Harvard political philosopher Sandel speaking at The Huffington Post on Friday.

America has placed too much faith in the power of markets for the past 30 years, a belief not even the financial crisis could shake. The country risks losing its soul as a result.

That's the warning of Harvard political philosopher Michael J. Sandel, expressed in a new book, "What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets."

"Over the past three decades, roughly, markets have been triumphant," Sandel told The Huffington Post on Friday, referring to the ascension, which he said began with the political rise of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s, of "the idea that markets are the primary instrument for achieving the public good."

This belief in the power of markets to improve our lives was reinforced by Tony Blair and Bill Clinton and survived even the financial crisis, Sandel noted, "after all financial markets were utterly discredited, or so it seemed."

Sandel said American society is steadily changing from a market economy to what he calls a "market society, a way of life in which market values and market reasoning reach into every sphere of life," including education, health care and military service.

In an excerpt of his book published by The Atlantic, Sandel cites several specific and unnerving examples of the creeping reach of markets, including a woman who earned $10,000 for having a company's Web address permanently tattooed on her forehead. She used the money to help pay for her son's education.

The problem with being able to buy and sell increasing numbers of things is that we devalue the things we are buying and selling -- including our foreheads, our health, our children's education, Sandel argues. Ultimately this corrodes the ties that bind Americans together.

"The more things money can buy, the more the affluent can buy their way out," Sandel said. "The affluent lose a stake in the public sphere, and increasingly we lead separate lives."

"That's not good for democracy, and it's not a satisfying way to live," he added.

Sandel said he had little hope that the financial reforms that followed the crisis would do much to change the dominance of markets. After all, they still arise from the belief that the market knows best and that corporations should be relatively unfettered. The Dodd-Frank financial regulations have left in place banks that are too big to fail and not accountable for creating the crisis, Sandel said. That has led to a festering anger on both sides of the political spectrum, manifested in the Tea Party and Occupy movements.

Sandel said that really breaking the thrall of the markets would require overcoming "an allergy we have ... to bringing ethics, morality and virtue into public discourse." That could be a particular problem for the left, which is accustomed to those realms being the home turf of the religious right, on issues such as reproduction and sexuality.

A potentially higher hurdle to changing attitudes is that the allure of free markets is closely tied to how Americans see themselves.

"In our society especially, markets seem to embody a certain idea of freedom," Sandel said. "It's a narrow, limited, impoverished idea of freedom -- the freedom to buy and trade goods, a consumerist idea of freedom. And it's deeply held.

"The allure of that narrow vision of freedom is not something to be underestimated," he added. "That is why it's hard to break the thrall of markets and market thinking."

Comments

[Skeetshooter]

02:02 AM on 04/16/2012

If we're too stupid to learn from '08, how is it we still have the brains to breathe? We're doomed. Doomed, I say!

[american-dolt]

06:36 PM on 04/15/2012

No kidding.

[Lahonda]

01:35 PM on 04/15/2012

The rich want to own and control the poor.

[IfIonlyknew]

06:19 PM on 04/15/2012

Not to mention "The world".

[TheTightwireGuy]

11:59 AM on 04/15/2012

I've been watching reruns of Star Trek-The Next Generation lately, and the theme of this article spurred me to venture that America has moved closer to becoming a Ferengi society since the 1980s:
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferengi

In other words, the Reagan Revolution should be renamed the Ferengi Revolution.

TTG

[uniquindividual]

11:11 AM on 04/15/2012

Fascism is another word for a market society.

[Janzee12000]

08:44 PM on 04/14/2012

I wonder what affect Larry Summers had on his teaching at Harvard...? My initial feeling is that I see his philosophy is in direct contrast 'because' of what Summers brought to that school and to the graduates that burned our economy...

[jistinnkees]

12:26 PM on 04/14/2012

I think that if there is a god he is looking down on us and thinking; this Adam and Eve thing was not my smartest idea.

[Don Glenn]

07:40 PM on 04/13/2012

Yes Yes Yes, The more value we put in the market the less value we put in the human instinct.

[oftenon]

07:40 PM on 04/13/2012

Is that a voice of sanity and reason? Away, vile specter! Speak ye not against our covenant with the golden lamb and 54 inch flatscreen! Be gone!!