Do Markets Have Morals?

In April 2012, Michael Sandel released his latest book  “What Money Can’t Buy: the Moral Limits of Markets.” Recently, he supplemented his book with an article on the topic, and recently gave a speech at the Harvard Law School re-emphasizing his point of view. The crux of his argument is simple: markets do not take into account human dignity or morality and thus have started to conquer territory that should have otherwise been left on its own.
We must admit that though Sandel’s argument is interesting and strong, his book’s title is flawed. Sandel talks about what money can’t buy, yet he draws all his examples from aspects of society where markets have burgeoned regardless of moral constraint, as with black markets for organs, paying your child to read, or giving money for additional Facebook friends. Considering the human nature of all these monetary transaction,  maybe a better title would have been, “What Money Should Not Buy.” But if you interpret Sandel’s argument in terms of what should and should not be sold, the question becomes by default another: it is no longer whether or not markets have morals, but whether or not certain things should be allowed in the markets at all.
The philosophical debate of what is for sale has not been straightforwardly expressed until lately. It seems that with increasing technology, inequality and the successes of economics, as well as its failures, what was a scattered topic  throughout modern history has now become of  a philosophical stream of its own.  In fact, many services that were once considered too sacred to sell have become a widely-accepted part of the market. We need only think of the concept of human capital, a concept which until the late 1980s was thought as inadmissible by society at large. Humans could not be seen as capital, because to see humans as capital  would be to treat to treat human beings as commodities, to objectify them. And yet, twenty years later, human capital is a quintessential element of neoclassic economic theory, and firms could not be understood without it.
But there is a piece of the puzzle that Sandel has ignored when discussing the question of market morality. It seems that when studying markets, we forget that markets are a human invention and arise from human needs and interactions. Markets might be inert, and they might not take into account what is moral, but markets are not separated from the human factor. They are essentially an element of human society.
The implications of this debate are political: if markets have no morals, and if humans create markets even where there should not be one, then how should the society react? Should the state interfere? Many of the social elements that seem to have a market of their own, as was the case with paying for a friend or a conversation, were created based on individual needs, by individuals themselves. If they have evolved, that means that perhaps there is a need for them. Nevertheless, it is necessary to remember that there are broader, darker implications to the idea of a market for everything. One point we can all agree with Sandel, is that putting a price on everything creates further inequality, and not even necessarily in an economic sense.
Many of the examples mentioned in both Sandel’s book and article relate to firms, or individuals using someone else’s wealth or fragility, but the emphasis is on the latter. He points to examples such as using your forehead for advertising, or buying mercenaries to fight for your cause. The humanity of one class is exploited for the benefit of another. Or in the case of black markets for organs, it can create economic discrimination: only the ones rich enough can buy the needed organs to save their lives. In a sense, it is giving a price to life, or worth based on wealth. Who deserves to live and who doesn’t should not be decided by markets.   It might be pragmatic, it might solve the problem, but those are entirely separate from what is right. There is a danger to this thinking, not because  it might cause society to go down a slippery slope, but economists make many assumptions that can and should be questioned.
In the end, the debate of what should and should not be for sale is a very intricate one. The underpinnings of such a question go deeper into social and political theory.  Should humans be allowed to act on will? And if so, where is the limit? We always wonder when the state should interfere, or when does a human’s capacity to understand what is good for him- or herself diminish,  and the answer comes down to the dichotomy between personal choice and ‘greater good.’ Maybe there will come a day when selling your organs for money will be legal and widely accepted, where most incentives are monetary. But I think the main question we should ask ourselves is not when this will happen, but whether we should allow this to happen.