Michael Sandel - Are There Things Money Shouldn't Be Able To Buy?

thank you very much thank you for coming it's a great pleasure to be here it brings back a lot of memories being back in Oxford I was here for four years as a graduate student and being here tonight takes me back to the time when I first arrived in Oxford almost four decades ago they had a welcoming dinner for new students at Bal College which is where I was the master at that time was a man named Christopher Hill a renowned historian and his in his welcoming remarks he recalled his early days at Oxford as

a young tutor and he told us of his dutiful but somewhat patronizing upper class students back in those days one of whom left him a 5B tip at the end of the term Master Hill's point I think if I remember it correctly was that times had changed and that we were not supposed to tip the tutors not that the thought had occurred to me before he mentioned it but it does raise an interesting question why not what's wrong with tipping the tutor maybe nothing if the tutor is an economist after all according to many economists

and also non-economists in the grip of economic ways of thinking money is always a good way of allocating Goods or even I suppose of expressing thanks now I assume that Christopher Hill disapproved of the tip because he viewed the monetary payment as an indignity as a failure to regard teaching with the proper respect but not everybody views money and teaching in this way Adam Smith for one did not he saw nothing wrong with compensating University teachers according to Market principles Smith thought that teachers professors should be paid according to the number of students their classes

attracted I think there's something appealing in this idea myself but Smith's argument was that for colleges and universities to pay professors a fixed salary is a recipe for for laziness especially he said where colleges and universities are self-governing under such conditions he thought the members of the college are likely to be as he put it very indulgent to one another and every man to consent that his neighbor May neglect his duty provided he himself is allowed to neglect his own now where do you suppose that Adam Smith found the clearest example of the sloth induced

by fixed stiens in the University of Oxford which brings me to the subject I would like to discuss with you tonight which is are there some things that money should not be able to buy and I'd like to approach this question by asking a prior question a slightly different but related one are there some things that money can't buy even if it tries now why does this question matter it matters because if you look around the world over the past three or four decades we've witnessed a quiet Revolution today there are very few things that

money can't buy here's one of my favorites if you're sentenced to a jail term in Santa Barbara California just in case you find yourself in that predicament and if you don't like the standard accommodations in the jail and if you have the money you can buy a prison cell upgrade for how much do you suppose anybody $70 a night $70 well it's it is about that it's a little bit higher something like that how did you know that you know the London Eye used to be lit up blue at night maybe you've seen it but

no longer now the London Eye is lit red do you know why Coca-Cola cocacola has bought the naming rights and The Branding rights to the London Eye and so coca colola insignias appear in each carriage and the red cocacola lighting will illuminate the the skyline of this modern icon there are more serious aspects of life where Market values and Market thinking predominate take the way we fight our wars did you know that in Iraq and Afghanistan there were more paid military contractors private contractors on the ground than there were US military troops now this isn't

because we had a public debate about whether we wanted to Outsource War to private companies somehow it just happened in recent decades we've drifted from having market economies to becoming Market societies the difference is this a market economy is a tool a valuable and effective tool for organizing ing productive activity but a market Society is a place where almost everything is up for sale it's a way of life in which Market thinking and Market values increasingly infiltrate or come to invade every aspect of life family life and personal relations health education the media politics law

Civic life and the question I would like to discuss with you tonight is whether we should worry about this and if so why now one way of thinking about whether we should worry about becoming Market socities is to ask where markets belong and where they don't and to think about that question let's begin by asking the question are there some things money can can't buy surely there are at least a few even today friendship for example suppose you want more friends than you have and let's say you find it difficult to acquire them in the

usual way it might occur to you to buy a few but you're nodding does that mean you've already considered that possibility but you would quickly realize I think that it wouldn't work somehow we know we sense that a a hired friend isn't the same as a real one somehow the money that would buy the friend dissolves the good we seek so friendship is something money can't buy but what about so social practices that are expressions of friendship or of personal relations in China I read about a company in China called the tianin apology company if

you need to apologize to someone and a strange lover maybe or a business associate uh but you can't quite bring yourself to do it apparently you can go to the tianin apology company and hire someone to do it for you the slogan of the company is we say sorry for you or take another example wedding toasts wedding speeches now have some of you had the experience of being asked maybe not many of you yet being asked to deliver a wedding speech or a wedding toast for a for a friend anyone had that experience a few

it can be it's a kind of Honor but it it can also be anxiety provoking especially if you're not a very confident speaker and you're not quite sure how to choose the right words well today there's help there are companies online companies where if you find yourself Frozen with fear at the prospect of writing a powerful moving wedding speech you can go online you can enter some information about your friend about the couple about how they met about how long you knew them about whether you want a funny speech or or a tear-jerking very moving

speech you put all this information in you send it in and within three business days you get a wedding speech custom written just for you for how much do you suppose what would do you know that one also $2 200 it's it's actually actually a bargain $149 including postage and handling sorry I said a thousand $1,000 well maybe the people writing these speeches are not the most talented writers I don't know now so in a way a wedding toast or an apology is something that money can buy or can it what and the way to

think about this is to ask how would you feel if someone sent you a bought apology uh or if at your wedding your best friend delivered a moving wedding toast to you so resonant and poignant that it brought tears to everyone in attendance and then you learned later that he had bought this wedding speech online for $149 would it diminish the value probably it would and the test of that is if you bought such a wedding speech would you announce that fact as you were about to deliver it probably not so apologies and wedding toasts

these are examples of goods that strictly speaking now money can buy but as expressions of friendship if it's known that the thing was bought the meaning and value of the good of the gesture of the expression is to that extent diminished tainted now this interesting feature about expressions of friendship and personal relations can help us think about other contested cases of commodification putting things up for sale there's a debate in many parts of the world for example about whether there should be a free market in kidneys and other human organs for transplantation every year thousands

of people die waiting on lists in desperate need of a kidney transplant to survive many economists and others say the supply generated by altruistic donations is too small so why not use the market let people buy and sell kidneys to increase the supply save lives other people object other people find it morally objectionable now well let's just see what people in the room think about this question if it were up to you should there be a free market in buying and selling kidneys and other human organs or should there not be how many say yes

and how many say no the majority say no um let's let's hear the objections those of you who object what would be your objections quickly to the buying and selling of kidneys who will give who will articulate the reason yes stand up so we can hear and we do actually have microphones if we can get can we get the microphone Runners maybe on this aisle we can tell us quickly why you would object people who were very poor might actually sell their kidneys to like sort of make End meat help their families I think that

people could be used in that way people might be exploited especially if they wait wait wait wait wait especially if they're desperately poor yeah and why is that someone might say well but it must be worth it to them what would you say to that it seems like the the people who are buying the kidneys from them are taking advantage of the fact that they know that those people have no other options the these people have no other options and so and what's your name uh Anna Anna yeah so Anna objects on the grounds that

that in many cases the people doing the selling will have no other options which I think you mean uh suggests tell me if I've got it right that what seems to be a free choice an act of consent a voluntary deal isn't all that voluntary yeah that makes sense so Anna I was I was just repeating what I thought you said that's good that's good so thank you all right so there's one objection there's one objection now let's suppose in order to see whether there are any further uh any other objections independent of Anna's um

suppose we lived in a more equal Society or at least in a society or in a world where no one was desperately poor in the the way that many people are today and so in such a world would there still be any objection to buying and selling kidneys is there someone who would nonetheless have an objection yeah stand up and um I think it would allow sorry yeah I think it would allow for a society whereby people presumably kidneys will be quite expensive um and so even though people aren't desperately poor enough to need to

sell them there'd be people that could buy them and people that couldn't buy them and therefore it's similar to the situation you have with Healthcare in the states at the moment you have a state whereby people who are ill if you have enough money you can get yourself cured and if not you can't so the the access to a kidney would be conditioned on the ability to pay and anything Universal which you think would be unfair yes all right that's good thank you for that now let's let's see if we can imagine that we distributed

the income and wealth in a society to deal even with that inequality in in an equal hypothetically in an equal society would there be any remaining objection or would both of these objections be put to rest is there any further reason and those of you up in the gallery can also offer a reason if someone has one independent of the worry about inequality and the coercion and the desperation and the exploitation built into background conditions of inequality what would be a further reason who else has a reason apart from that or or does that deal

with all of the problems yes in the back stand up um prophet motive might Force um or might incentivize some suppliers of kidneys to basically produce shoddy kidneys that don't perfectly match with the recipient and and so might cause um unnecessary health problems for the recipient and also might um result in um poor quality surgeries for the donor and for the recipient but because the doctors or the Brokers might be trying to make money and cut Corners with safety yeah and with health good what else what what were you going to say um I would

say that even in a fair economic Society people can still be exploited by other means such as blackmail or violence so um there would be inequalities that would allow people to be taken advantage of even in an economically equal Society all right now similar arguments arise so we have arguments to do with inequality I'm I'm pressing people to come up with objections not because the inequality objection isn't powerful but intrinsic objections to selling off body parts and as you think about it similar debates arise with regard to prostitution or the selling of sex some people

favor the right to buy and sell sex others say it's morally objectionable because typically those who sell sex are not really doing it freely they're under the threat of violence or desperate need for money or drug addiction but same question could be asked there if we imagined an equal Society then would there be no further objection to prostitution what would you say in the back the objection could be that you should not um give people the ability to sell their own body parts because because um a kidney may be very valuable to yourself so um

you should not put people in a position that they indeed you know similar as selling sex or selling kidneys and but why is that bad you think it's somehow a violation of human dignity even if it's not done under desperation what's wrong with it um I maybe there's somebody else who is better to answer but uh I all right that's all right um perhaps you could say you know a person is valuable as a whole and you cannot just take things away from it so it's instrumentalizing or objectifying our bodies or our sexuality yeah to

commodify those things I was just going to say sacred all right we better get you a microphone for that thought if you can sell everything then is nothing sacred there has to be something that we take outside of economic selling it just seems wrong to break up parts of your body and put it on a Marketplace it seems wrong to to use our bodies as collections of spare parts to treat ourselves as objects for profit likewise selling sex presumably yes so we think of humans as different to cars usually so different to cars well we

do but we're what we're trying to get at is why exactly and how and you say it has something what's your name Cynthia Cynthia you say it has something to do maybe with the notion of sanctity or the sanctity of the human body and its Integrity or of our sexual capacities and faculties and that it's what a kind of selling out or corrupting or degrading if we do yes we treat ourselves like cars we treat ourselves like Commodities like things yes yeah all right let's all right synthia yes all right what about Cynthia's idea that

even independent of the argument about inequality and about coercion implicit or explicit coercion there are some aspects of the human person or human experience that should not be bought and sold because it objectifies us as human beings it commodifies us it we turn ourselves into things like cars and that's a violation of the sanctity of the Integrity of the human body or of our sexual identities um who disagrees with Cynthia about that and would like to respond to to that suggestion yes uh does this work testing I think if there if there's a demand and

there are people dying because of a a lack of body parts then that's a more important cause for concern how does that apply in the case of prostitution would you say if there are people who can't get sexual satisfaction through normal means and that's viewed as a as as a as a right or as a basic human experience then that's a service that's provided for them I suppose and so they should be able to buy it in the market do you agree no what's tell us your name Omar Omar yeah stand up what what's your

name man man man Monte you disagree with Omar um not necessarily I was going to respond to her argument because I was just going to say um because we commodify ourselves all the time we use our brain we work as workers we use our we we as long as we work we commodify ourselves we use ourselves as as things so kidney as a product and SE as a product is not necessarily different from our brain or the daily work we does so that's what I was going to say work is work no it's not it's

just you commodify yourself as a thing we commodify ourselves as things all the time you're suggesting yes so and that's true whenever we use our bodies to to make a living yes would you say that athletes can modify themselves use their bodies yes not necessarily bodies but brain or your intellect intelligence it's like it's the same it's the same I think it's the same so if you put your brain power to work to make a living yes in going to work for a hedge fund a what sorry oh that wouldn't involve much brain power you

don't think no no no no no sorry I sorry I just didn't get it huh sorry I just didn't get it okay you were saying or let's say you go to work as um a scientist a research scientist yeah yeah that involves a lot of mental yes intellectual capacity brain power do you think at someone who devotes himself or herself to scientific research let's say trying to discover uh going into stem cell research trying to cure diabetes let's say that person is doing what using and commodifying his or her brain you have to make another

argument about how and sealing kidney or sealing sex is essentially different from sealing your brain or sealing your tenges all right that's a pretty good challenge Cynthia what do you say to that well the argument is that your argument about sanctity about using ourselves our bodies as things like cars objectifying the argument is anytime we use our talents our intellect never mind our bodies even we are so to speak commodifying ourselves using ourselves as means to make money right that's very depressing um what about people who work in charity if they're not if you're volunteering

and you don't get money for what you're doing why would you do it if your sole purpose is always to make money from your actions but is that the only way out do you want to concede the point the claim that all paid work is a kind of is on a par with prostitution in the sense that it involves using ourselves objectifying ourselves commodifying ourselves for money I guess yeah different things talking about physicality or actually working is that where you're getting it well it does raise it this this whole part of the debate raises

an interesting moral and philosophical question about human dignity and also about human work and whether there are some forms of work that are consistent with human dignity even the sanctity of the human person your earlier point or whether anytime we enter the labor market and deploy our talents and skills for remuneration is that a kind of selling out now I suppose one one counterargument might be that if the only reason you become a neuroscientist is for the money then maybe there is something corrupting in that if the only reason you become an athlete if those

are your gifts or a musician if the only reason you do it or write books if you're a novelist if the only reason you do it is to make money maybe there is something degrading about that but that leaves open the question whether other reasons for engaging in these vocations these callings can make work other than a kind of indignity a kind of selling out a kind of using ourselves what's interesting if you step back and I want to first of all I want to thank everyone who's joined in in this round of the debate

about kidneys prostitution and work thank you all of you for doing that if you step back from these examples why what is worth noticing is that there are two different kinds of issues here two different kinds of philosophical claims two different kinds of moral objections one of them says to know whether we should buy and sell stuff we have to ask how free really is the exchange or is there inequality in the background that makes at least some parties to these deals coerced exploited not really free so that's the objection from inequality an objection about

freedom and coercion but there is another range of questions about commodification independent of the question of inequality and coercion to do with what it means to respect ourselves to honor human dignity what it means to treat certain human capacities as sacred or at least as more than a mere thing now in arguments this distinction is important because of the two arguments two reasons to worry about putting a price on everything the first is quite familiar and you can see this if you listen to the debate we just had it was the reason that came most

quickly to people's minds those who objected to some of these practices there's unfairness in the background conditions of society there's inequality people aren't really choosing freely and after all what recommends markets is that it seems markets seem to involve free choices consent but the less familiar more difficult objection has has to do with the second objection which has to do with the intrinsic good at stake in the Integrity of the human body let's say in the proper way of regarding our sexuality in the proper way of treating ourselves with regard to the work we do

you might call this argument against commodifying certain things the argument from Cor coruption because what's allegedly corrupted at least in some of these cases is the proper way of treating or regarding certain aspects of ourselves I'd like to change the example from the human body and from Human work to a very different kind of example and see what you think the environment wildlife conservation there are as you know a great many endangered species and we're not doing a very good job of protecting them the black rhino in Africa is an endangered species and for all

the laws against hunting and poaching and killing Black Rhinos the population is dwindling too I think it's about 5,000 only many of them are in Namibia now the namibian wildlife Authority has come up with a novel Market oriented way of trying to raise funds for preservation of endangered species they recently held an auction they auctioned off to raise money for wildlife conservation they auctioned off the right to shoot one black rhino and the idea is that the money derived from the auction will go toward the protection of the other Black Rhinos now let's suppose for

the sake now they conducted this auction globally and the winning bid last year came not surprisingly you may think from A Trophy Hunter from Texas who bid $350,000 for the privilege of going and shooting one black rhino now Defenders of the policy say this is the best way the most effective way of raising money to protect wildlife and let's assume for the sake of argument that that's true suppose it were the best way of raising funds furthermore they said the winning Hunter can't just go hunt any black rhino he chooses but we will choose a

particularly old orinary black rhino beyond the age of reproduction who's just wreaking havoc anyhow and that that's the one that will die to raise the funds to save the rest and we'll do one a year or two a year so let's assume this is an effective way of raising money to protect Wildlife how many here would favor this use of a market mechanism and how many would object how many how many would favor it and how many would object check all right it's a pretty good division of the house on the the black rhino let's

hear from someone who objects what would be your reason anyone in the gallery want to yes okay go ahead it's not Hunter fromex not no he is the one who gets to shoot it doesn't doesn't solve the problem it raises money to protect the other doesn't solve the problem well it doesn't and what do you mean when you say it doesn't solve the problem what is the problem that it doesn't solve seems but it raises let's say it really does raise a lot of money why isn't that good is not the origin of the problem

not the origin but he thinks of himself as part of the solution he's paying all this money somehow you you find it offensive I think but I'm pressing you to say why exactly what's objectionable what would you say yeah stand up so we can hear you put put the microphone closer okay if the popularity or the demand to shoot the rhino goes down and the only bid you get is $2 to shoot the Rhino it would be a bad deal has has the actual value of the Rhino changed from 350,000 to two I don't think

so well the intrinsic value won't have changed but the market value will have changed and then maybe it'll be a bad policy but but what's intrinsically wrong if anything is wrong with this policy yes the woman toward the back yeah I think it's like the symbol you're set you're like the message you're sending you're saying it's okay to kill a rhino whereas what you're trying to do really is protect them but you're saying it's okay to kill one all right and what's your name Rose rose so the message the auction sends a message the market

mechanism has an expressive significance of what conf referring permission Rose says on killing a rhino now why is that bad because the cause you're trying to defend is saving the rhinos and right now you're just auctioning off Rhino I don't well it it's true and there is something you find something distasteful yeah in the auction itself even if it raises money that does good I think also there are other ways of I mean that's put that aside let's assume for the moment there aren't better ways so there is a a kind of valorizing or honoring

the activity of shooting a rhino even making it a luxury good I suppose and there's a moral cost in that do you think yeah what is what is the moral cost exactly um I think it's just showing the world that it's okay that it's okay and even a Prestige item may maybe all right um what do you say um am I on I'm good um I think that it sends off a bad message in that in we would probably find it morally distasteful that let's say um we auctioned off the right let's say it was

a prisoner on death row that we auctioned off the right to um kill a prisoner on death right we'd find that pretty distasteful with a human being and I think that we do value animals in a in a way that even if it raised a lot of money killing the prisoner on death row and they were still going to die and that you gave someone the honor of doing that we' find that distasteful and that as we honor animals that we don't we have uh laws against animal cruelty and things I think that we probably

still find we'd find that morally distasteful there so in that way I think that the same way we'd find that morally tasteful we should still find this morally distasteful that's an what's your name Josh Josh that's an interesting analogy now some will say no but I'm against that because some will say I'm I'm against capital punishment in the first place but you're imagining that the prisoner has already been condemned to die under some legal regime yes and so someone or other some official of the state will carry out the sentence exactly so let's say it

was Saddam Hussein or someone they they were on death row and we gave off the right to do that and so you you say even if the result will be the same this prisoner will be executed that it would be objectionable to raise funds for the prison let's say by saying all right we'll auction off the right uh to to what would it be to pull the lever on the electric pull the lever let's it could be just whatever I mean up to their choice really once you've ored off the right to that I think

they can choose how they do it right yeah you don't want to let your imagination run too all right so now let's hear from a defender of the Rhino auction and see if you can answer a Defender the arguments of rose and Josh about the expressive the I suppose it's an instance of this corruption argument isn't it it's corrupting exactly exactly and it it carries a moral cost it's corrosive of the proper way of regarding endangered species or even convicted prisoners who has who disagrees with that idea and has a counterargument to it yeah see

if we can get you a microphone oh thank you so I think the argument is based on some sort of using the um this promotion of an end as instrumental to the end itself so in the sense that we don't want to promote killing animals and therefore the auction is a bad thing but we don't want to promote killing animals because we want to save animals and we're saving animals the most efficient way by sacrificing a rhino in order to save others right so therefore I think the um it doesn't really matter then if we

if we promote a bad purpose since we're achieving the end we're trying the most efficiently by doing so and what's what's your name Paul Paul but Paul what would you say to Josh's uh counter example about would would you say Paul that it's all right on efficiency grounds to auction off the right to uh execute the convicted prison maybe not uh I I would say maybe not no I would say that we s we come to a um a split whether there is for example it would be utilitarian if we can use that word uh

the best to achieve um the best Global outcome to save the most amount of rhinos but yet there might be some intrinsic value in the life of one Rhino that we can't trade for the lives of others for example and that's why you wouldn't auction off the right to kill the prisoner uh so I I I suppose there is some distaste that that as well I would probably not auction out that because that would probably not achieve the purpose then we let suppose it raises more money for the jail that could be used to educate

for the educational programs for the health clinic lots of good utilitarian consequences yeah what the heck then I'll do it yeah that sounds good you would W all right okay Paul Paul is a principled has a principle position and you and you follow the principle wherever it leads there's um there's something admirable in that something something all right one other example very quickly so there are lots of schools that struggle with the challenge of motivating kids especially from poor backgrounds to study hard to get good grades to read books and so they've experimented in some

places with using a market mechanism paying kids to read books or get good grades or to score well on tests they've tried this in New York in Chicago in Washington DC $50 for an a $35 for a b it would be like $50 to get a first something like that you think you should get more than $50 for in um in Dallas Texas they have a program that pays young kids eight-year-old kids $2 for each book they read to encourage kids to read more books now if you were the head of a school and this

proposal were brought to you how many think it would be worth a try and how many would reject it on principle show of hands how many think at least it's worth a try and how many would object another pretty good division relatively even division Josh objected Rose did you object I didn't see I don't know you don't know Paul no you were for it I vote for it right if you're but I V if you're going to auction the right to hang the guy you'll certainly pay the kid to read all right those who object

what's wrong with it yes hey um because I think if you think about it you're actually incentivizing the wrong thing you're not incentivizing educating uh yourself to alleviate the problems of social inequality by getting disadvantaged kids to read more to do better because they've read more you're incentivizing them to finish more books you're incentivizing them to plow through their work to plow through their reading without taking taking from them the messages the ideas uh the the ways of thinking that actually will be what um allows them to succeed in life so you're really not succeeding

in your purpose at all I don't think and you're incentivizing the wrong thing what what should we be trying to teach these kids if not to read more books um well to to sorry um to to learn more from them to engage with them um better and why will the money prevent that I'm sorry why will the money prev that because um when you're offering money for something you're always uh offering the money for a specific measurable thing now I don't think anyone's really developed a system of measuring learning I certainly don't believe Oxford has

yet but accurately reflects how much you've really learned from a book it's there's always got to be a mar scheme there's always got to be some kind of H you're trying to jump through and that diminishes the intrinsic good of learning do you think yeah absolutely I I think it does jumping through a hoop getting paid doing it for the wrong reason yeah exactly because I actually don't think it's necessarily the getting the good grades that of course uh providing money would encourage people to get that gets them better jobs that gets them doing better

things in society I think it's learning along the way um learning along the way for its own sake um yeah partially but also because I do think that really develops the way you're thinking um and I'm not sure that jumping through hoops necessarily does what's your name uh I'm Josh Josh um who disagrees with Josh and can say why where okay yeah we should go to the gallery again stay there have I thanks value is just enough to just jump start the kid interest in Reading in that sense you know although I do see a

point about the fact that when you're monetizing reading in effectively you're effectively sending up the wrong message but what if you know there incentive is just enough to get kids just just start learning wouldn't that bring our a better in the sense that you get more people reading you get you know improve in the what okay so you're kind of saying it's like a sort of priming the pump argument you put a little bit in you pay a kid $2 to read a book they read the book they like it and they sorry sorry about

that you're sort of uh like priming the pump you're saying you pay a kid $2 to read a book he reads B you might like the book maybe even one in 10 likes the book and that justifies paying the $2 is is is basically the idea um well I I I think the issue that I I have with that is um that in the vast majority of cases I think it would probably fail and I think um if that's the case if that's what you think the merits of such a scheme would be then why

not say right have $10 for reading the first book and and then nothing after that and do you genuinely think that that would promote the results you're hoping it would I mean the the price is negotiable we can haggle on that but well but then it would matter a lot that that first book were a really good one precisely yeah all right so so the issue here the issue here is Josh's objection it's similar in a way to the objections we heard in the case of the Rhino sale and even the executing the prisoner sale

in that Josh worries that the money changes and degrades the meaning of the activity in this case learning it substitutes a monetary incentive that crowds out the higher motive that we want kids to acquire when we teach them and then what's your name Jeremiah Jeremiah Jeremiah counters with the argument that he agrees that there are higher and lower motivations worthier and unworthy uh more and less worthy reasons to read or to learn but Jeremiah says maybe the money will bring the kids to read for the wrong reason what he would concede to be the wrong

reason but they might might fall in love with reading and then no longer need to be paid is that the idea exactly all right but what's interesting about this exchange is that both sides of this argument accept in principle the argument from corruption both sides of this argument accept that there are higher and lower ways of valuing goods and social practices in this case learning and that reading learning for pay or for an instrumental reason or maybe even just to get a better job is missing the higher reason the higher motivation for Learning and reading

so I want to thank everyone who's participated in this round um well done and I want to see what can clusions we can draw from this how seriously should we take what I've been calling the argument from corruption there we've considered a lot of hypothetical cases some actual cases but in the world we can see examples of the way in which introducing money or cash incentives can change the meaning of goods in Switzerland not too long ago they were trying to decide where to locate a nuclear waste site no Community wants one in its backyard

and they identified a community a small town in the mountains of Switzerland is likely to be the safest place but under the law they had to consult and get the approval of the residents of the town and so before the decision was made they did a survey and they asked the residents of the town if your town is chosen would you vote to approve the nuclear waste site despite the risk 51% said yes then they asked a second question they said now suppose that Parliament chooses your town and offers to pay in compensation for the

risk each resident of the Town an annual sum up to 6,000 twiss Franks I think it was then would you vote to approve now how many people do you think were willing to accept it 80 30 20 other guesses 90 it went it went down it it dropped in half from 51 to 25% when money was offered now from the standpoint of standard economic analysis and price Theory maybe even the economic theory that some of you are studying in PPE this is an anomaly because according to price Theory when you offer people money to do

something or increase the offer more people not fewer are willing to do that thing so happened what do you think happened here was it in the same um surve it was the same same people same survey what accounts for this what would you say just yeah say it again it suggests an increased risk it suggests an increased risk that could be true that the people might think gee if they're willing to pay me all that money this must be riskier than I thought it could be that but they tested for that and it turns out

that the estimate of the risk was about the same before and after the offer was made so there must be some other reason to account for this what would you say yeah uh I mainly believe it has to do with consent that we all have an instinct in order to requ some so in the first case they voluntarily said that they like the nuclear side to be situated there however when they were not given the situation to say no because the government said that this where the nulear will be situated then that's when they all

dis but in both PL both cases they were given the choice both cases they were asked their consent so why would did only half why did the number drop in half when they were offered money I think so you've got this idea Civic National Duty should have civic duty someone's going to have to do it you put money on the table you start thinking in money terms so so when they were first asked what's your name Robert so Robert says that when they were first asked the 51% were responding out of a sense of civic

duty they weren't offered any money but they said this is maybe they thought the country needs the energy the waste has to go somewhere we're willing to accept that risk for the sake of the common good but when money entered the picture it changed the meaning of the question what had been a Civic question became a pecuniary one a deal a financial transaction and people were not willing to as they now saw it to sell out the safety of themselves and their families for money they asked people who changed their minds why did you change

and they said we didn't want to be bribed somehow the money felt like a bribe and so as in a lot of the examples we were discussing earlier thank you Rob here's a real life example where introducing a cash incentive a market mechanism changed the meaning of the activity of the question one other example another study by some economists in Israel every year school children gather and as part of a school project go door to-door collecting donations for charity one year some economists did an experiment with these students they divided them into three groups the

first group was given a short motivational speech about the importance of the charitable causes and sent on their way the second group given the same speech but offered a 1% Commission on the money they raised and the third group same speech but a 10% commission which group do you think raised the most money for charity call it out what do you think the second one the 10% group The First the unpaid group the first group the one the the kids who were not paid raised the most money now standard price theory was Vindicated to this

extent the kids who were offered 10% did raise more money than the kids offered 1% but the kids who were offered no commission raised more more money for charity even than those who are offered 10% something similar seems to have been going on here as Robert proposed in the Swiss nuclear waste site case introducing the commission the money changed the meaning of the activity what had been a moral and Civic project part of their civic education was now a job a kind of job and that crowded out the money the cash incentive crowded out the

intrinsic motivation to raise funds for the sake of the causes not for the sake of making money what conclusions can we draw from the discussions we've had and from these examples I think two one is about economics economists today often conceive their subject and teach it as if economics were a value neutral science of human behavior and social choice but if money and markets and Market thinking and Market values sometimes change the meaning of social practices if markets sometimes crowd out non-market Norms worth caring about then it's a mistake to think think that we can

decide when to use markets and when not to use them without engaging in normative questions what Norms will be what non-market Norms will be crowded out and should we care should we care if people are taught that Black Rhinos are objects of sport to be shot or prisoners should we care if these kids are reading books Not For the Love of it but for the money what will be the effect economists often assume that markets are inert that they do not touch or taint or change the meaning of the goods they exchange and this may

be true enough if we're talking about material Goods cars toasters flat screen televisions if you give me a flat screen television or sell me one it will work just as same either way the nature of the good the value of it won't change but the same may not be true when markets enter social life and Civic life so if economics is not a value neutral science of social choice if it is unavoidably normative then economics should not be conceived as a separate autonomous discipline it should be reconnected as it once was with Adam Smith and

John Stewart Mill and Carl Marx despite their differences economics should be seen as a subfield as a branch of moral and political philosophy not as a value neutral science that's one conclusion a second is about politics and about the way we conduct our public debates in recent decades the same decades when we've been in the grip of a kind of Market triumphalist Faith public discourse has been emptied has been hollowed out of larger ethical meaning citizens in democracies around the world are frustrated with politics with politicians with the Alternatives being offered by political parties and

I think with good reason because what passes for political discourse these days consists of of what of either narrow managerial technocratic talk which inspires no one or when passion does enter shouting matches where often bitter partisan shouting matches where people shout past one another what's missing is engagement with big ethical questions big normative questions question questions of values questions about the right way of valuing goods and social practices now why do we shrink from these questions people want politics to be about big things that matter why do we shrink from them why are we drawn

to Market Market logic in a way that extends to every sphere of life I think for a pretty deep reason it's not just that we believe markets deliver the goods and Rising prosperity and GDP it's not just that markets seem to be a value neutral way of deciding big public questions markets seem to provide us a a way of avoiding the hard work of debating and arguing in public about competing conceptions of the good life about how to Value Goods about what's sacred and what's not about what human dignity consists in about how to value

our bodies Our sexuality teaching and learning the natural world we disagree about these questions and because we disagree we tend to say we don't want to bring those moral disagreements into politics that's the appeal of markets it's their seeming neutrality but but it's a spurious appeal because what it leaves us with is an empty politics a moral vacuum in our public discourse that has contributed I think to the frustration with the terms of public discourse in democracies around the world and so what I draw for politics from the discussions we've had is just as economics

can't be value neutral neither should be politics or our public discourse what we need to do to put markets in their proper place is to morally reinvigorate the terms of public discourse to develop to overcome the bad habit of Outsourcing our moral judgments to markets and to develop an idea of mutual respect that does not say I respect people with different views by avoiding those views what we need is a a politics of mutual respect that engages with competing views including competing moral and even spiritual conceptions that's the only way we'll put we'll be able

to keep mark in their proper place but more than that this kind of morally reinvigorated public discourse I think is the only way we're going to lift up the terms of public discourse and begin to build some moral and spiritual resonance and purpose into Democratic public life that these days is pretty thin you're good at this I can tell from the discussions we've had only in this hour and so my proposal it's really an invitation but also a provocation and a challenge to you is to those of you who are interested in public life to

take seriously the project of reinvigorating democratic citizenship by helping us find our way to a morally more engaged kind of public discourse than the kind to which we become accustomed thank you all very much