What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets by Michael J. Sandel

Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2013 (reprint)

ISBN-13: 978-0374533656

Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition, Audible

I’m straying from horror fiction here, but What Money Can’t Buy goes into some really gruesome and horrifying topics, the kind that made my skin crawl, and certainly not what I expected in a book about market-based economics (I know, the topic of economics is already gruesome and horrifying to some people), and I really wanted to share my reaction with you. In the book, Michael Sandel poses a question to the reader that he never really answers: are there some things that should never be for sale? A lot of economists would answer “no”. Selling or trading out of self-interest, according to them, is the most efficient way for people who want things to get them. Seems logical, right? The devil is in the details.

Maybe you shrug your shoulders at the idea of lobbyists paying people to stand in line for them and hold places at Congressional hearings, preventing ordinary citizens from getting in (unethical and unfair, but not actually gruesome), but what about selling babies to the highest bidder? If it means people who can pay for it get what they want in the most efficient way possible, many economists would be okay with that, even if it seems creepy or unethical. Sandel presents two kinds of arguments that can be used to counter this. The first is fairness– it’s not fair for some people to be able to pay to have access to Congress at the expense of others– and the second is corruption– it degrades democracy to limit access to those who can pay. Even if, on an individual level, we are okay with this, is it moral and healthy for us as a society to sell access to Congress, or children to the highest bidder? (I am certain neither democracy nor children should be for sale, but you probably guessed that).

Here’s the part that I found viscerally gruesome and horrifying, though. Once everything is for sale, life and death become commodities, too. Did you know employers like Wal-Mart take out life insurance policies on their employees that have huge payouts to the company when the person dies? That person’s family may not collect anything, while the company gets hundreds of thousands of dollars. Apparently there are a lot of companies that do this. Has yours invested in a payout for them on your life? Because that’s creepy and seems really unfair, as well.   Did you know about viatical insurance? That’s where a terminally ill person with maybe a year left to live sells the value of their life insurance policy at a discount to an investor so they can pay for medical care. If the ill person dies, the investor collects the life insurance policy. If the person doesn’t die within a year, the investor loses the money. While most people don’t make this investment with the specific goal of profiting off death, the investor has to hope the ill person dies.  How awful is that? Hoping someone will die so you can cash in on it? When AIDS drugs to extend patients’ lifespan became available, some particularly unpleasant investors actually harassed the ill person– and it’s the investors who described the longer life spans as “horror stories”.  A state legislator actually voted against programs to help AIDS victims and then invested in viatical insurance for AIDS patients. That is not human nature at its best.

I should not be surprised at the existence of death pools–  a game where players make bets on what celebrities will die in a particular year. 2016 must have been a bonanza for them. There’s not actually a huge amount of money in play– it’s just really, really morbid. It’s even been the topic of a movie, with celebrities getting mysteriously knocked off. If there isn’t a horror novel out there that has used this yet, it’s just waiting to happen.

For me, THE most disturbing thing, though, was discovering that there was a proposed market in terrorism futures, suggested by our own Department of Defense on the theory that if the traders were backing their trades with their own money, they would use the abilities and research skills they used to trade futures in other markets to successfully predict assassinations and terrorist attacks. Congress, thankfully, shot this idea down. But this is the question Sandel poses us: does the end justify the means? If terminally ill patients can get the treatment they need, does it matter that an investor profits off their eventual death? If we can predict and prevent a terrorist attack, does it matter that it leaves a dark mark on the investors’ morals? Economists would say the moral issues are irrelevant, but are they really if they corrupt us? It’s not something that ends up affecting just one indivdual, but the way we all experience the meaning of life and death. I am really distressed at the idea of life and death being treated as commodities, although it probably happens in smaller ways every day.

Sandel covers other issues as well. Also included in the chapter on markets in death, he described bundled life insurance policies sold to banks being packaged into tradable securities that would generate income as the holders of the policies died, and could be sold to pension funds– pretty grim stuff. Other areas he mentions include paying to jump the line in a number of contexts, from Congressional hearings and national parks campsites to airports and amusement parks; providing incentives in areas as varied as paying kids for grades, carbon offsets, and selling the right to immigrate; naming rights and commercialization in contexts including nature trails, sports stadiums, jails, and schools; and the way markets can degrade or demean human relationships, volunteerism, and civic pride. My sense is that Sandel is counting on us to recognize that, while the efficiency of markets is beneficial in some contexts, the “better angels of our nature” cannot be bought. Yet. If we don’t examine the way commericalization and trade are affecting our society, though, those markets in life and death, and in so much else, will become more and more troubling, and we will see a great deal more of unfairness and corruption infecting our world. This is excellent, if disturbing, food for thought, as we navigate through today’s political, financial, and civic structures and issues.