THE GLENDON SCHOOL OF PUBLIC AND INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS

BOOK REVIEW: MICHAEL J. SANDEL,

WHAT MONEY CAN’T BUY? THE MORAL LIMITS OF MARKETS

By: Damien Accoulon, BA

Master’s of Public and International Affairs Candidate – Glendon College, York University
Master’s of Public Administration Candidate – Institut d’Études Politiques de Strasbourg
Master’s of Contemporary History Candidate – Université Paris Ouest-Nanterre-La Défense

For: Alex Himelfarb, PhD

Professor of Public Policy – York University

Final Research Paper

MPIA 6001 – Fall 2013

The Policy Process
Book review: Michael Sandel, What money can’t buy? Damien ACCOULON

Michael J. Sandel is a Harvard University political philosopher who used to write about justice.

The online public lecture on the topic - after 30 years of teaching at Harvard - definitely made him a

world reference in that matter1 and his previous book Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do?2 was

one of the bestsellers of the year 2010.3 After thinking about moral statements in justice, Sandel

logically assessed morality in market economy - where he sees a decline of moral values.

In What Money Can’t Buy? The Moral Limits of Markets,4 published in 2012, the author

reviews several social facts and evolutions within society which he considers would have been

“unthinkable three decades ago”. He sees them as symptoms of an (wrong) evolution of individuals’

relationship to society and explains that the laws of markets have become so influential that they

passed into society. Sandel states that: “Markets leave their mark on social norms. Often, market

incentives erode or crowd out nonmarket incentives.”5 To back up this assumption, Sandel gives the

example of refugees who could be trended, and of exchanges as ‘negative goods’ by some

economic thinkers (e.g. Becker) such as a regrettable like pollution.6

Another feature of Sandel’s essay is the distinction established between what money cannot buy

- or at least, cannot buy without spoiling it, like friendship or honourary awards - and what money

can buy but should not. Sandel provides the example of a wedding toast, which looses all its value

(mostly sentimental), if it is not written by the best man but has only been bought to an online

company, which premade them. Because it is the attention (and thus, a sentimental statement) put in

a wedding toast (or even a gift), buying a premade one would spoil it. In these cases, money can but

should not buy the good, because morality matters.

But Sandel assumes that the deregulation of the market since the 1980s led to a deregulation of

its moral limits, and therefore of society’s. The author sees an insidious but clear connection

1
Thomas L. Friedman, “The Professors’ Big Stage”, The New York Times, March 5, 2013
2
Michael J. Sandel, Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do?, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Penguin Book,
2010, 320 p.
3
Thomas L. Friedman, “Justice Goes Global”, The New York Times, July 14, 2011
4
Michael J. Sandel, What Money Can’t Buy? The Moral Limits of Markets [EBook version], New York: Farrar, Straus
and Giroux, Penguin Book, 2012, 111 p.
5
Ibid., p. 34
6
Ibid., p. 33-34

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Book review: Michael Sandel, What money can’t buy? Damien ACCOULON

between these two deregulations, and demonstrates the slow shift from life insurance and gambling,

which he considers are finally almost merged today - at least on a philosophical stage.7 In Sandel’s

opinion, all these facts must be taken into account to ensure that markets don’t crowd out moral

factors from the essential areas of society and morally preeminent public institutions like the police

or schools.

The Harvard professor concludes his book leaving the reader with several global reflections

about what the role of money and markets should be in our contemporary society. Indeed in his

opinion, the question of markets is really a question of how we want to live together. Do we want a

society where everything is up for sale? Or are there certain moral and civic goods that money

cannot buy? Where markets serve the common good and where it crowd out moral values? This is

the food for thought at the heart of Michael Sandel’s What Money Can’t Buy?

Author’s assumptions

About Society

In Michael Sandel’s opinion, society can be defined as a community of people, where most of

the individuals are puzzled between the wish to increase of their profits and the respect of their

moral habits and norms. In this community, socially reprehensible behaviours do exist because the

intrinsic values of the norms remain fundamental. Indeed, values are the structure of the society,

whereas, “from an economic point of view, social norms such as civic virtue and public-spiritedness

are great bargains”8 - if not a cost-effective way of motivating people without paying them. But

according to Sandel, this vision cannot be regarded as efficient as the intrinsic value of norms

obliges us to look at the payment of a civic duty as a kind of corruption of the public spirit and

moral education, implying dishonour. That is why paying children to collect donations is less

7
“As today’s massive market in life and death attests, the hard-fought effort to disentangle insurance from gambling has
come undone.”, Ibid., p. 80
8
Ibid., p. 60

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Book review: Michael Sandel, What money can’t buy? Damien ACCOULON

efficient in practice than asking them to do it for free - because the moral dimension of the task

matters but is crowed out by a monetary arrangement.9

About Economics & Morality

The major assumption of Sandel’s book is that economics does deal with morality. He assumes

that “the more markets extend their reach into noneconomic spheres of life, the more entangled they

become with moral questions.”10 Thus, when market reasoning travels beyond the domain of

material goods, it must “traffic in morality,” unless it wants blindly to maximize social utility

without regard for the moral worth of the preferences it satisfies.11 The standard price effect is not

valuable in such a morally charged context.

In this perspective, on the one hand, there are things that money just cannot buy without partly

spoiling it; let’s say for instance, friendship or honorary awards which lose their moral values when

bought. On the other hand, there are things money can buy but should not, because it corrupts it.

Sandel takes online pre-made wedding toasts as an example of this, if a premade wedding toast is

written by somebody other than the speaker, it loses its value (which is not monetary but

sentimental). In other words, it corrupts the meaning of the toast. Sandel assumes that “the

corruption consists in buying and selling something (a favourable verdict, say, or political

influence) that should not be up for sale.”12

In that respect, Sandel’s assumption that the laws of markets are infusing society is worrying

because paying changes the meaning.13 As a result of this, social norms are declining because the

market spoils social norms with economic rules.

9
Ibid., p. 59-61
10
Ibid., p. 46
11
Ibid., p. 46
12
Ibid., p. 26
13
Ibid., p. 63

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Book review: Michael Sandel, What money can’t buy? Damien ACCOULON

About Common Good

Sandel’s opinion is that the common good should always prevail in the society because the

common good is what does its cohesion (communitarian approach). The author also takes for

granted that the common good is a fundamental topic of disagreement within society, that implies a

political debate on this matter. This implies that the state has a role to play in the economy. Indeed,

if market rules are invading society and crowding out moral values, it is in the interest of society

that the state legally intervenes in order to prevent markets pushing too far through the corruption of

moral values.

The effective use of evidences

Many ways to the point, one method

Sandel is a very clear and meticulous writer. He uses a thorough method to raise his point and

almost force the reader to agree with his thesis. At the first stage of this merciless process, the

author shows the evidence(s) and gives a detailed view of the issue he is considering. He

accumulates arguments, each of them punching the reader to convince him how right Sandel is. As

a counterpoint, the author then provides the classic utilitarian (economic) justification, which is

based on the principle that all transaction results in a common agreement, which satisfies both parts

of the deal. After this obviously not finely shaded understanding of an often-harsh reality, Sandel

finally assesses why it is so (because of the invasion of markets into an area of society which should

not be market-ruled) and why it should be otherwise (because moral matters). On a circular mode,

he then provides another striking example a little bit more shocking than the previous one - leading

the reader to the conclusion that things are worsening.

Thanks to this skilful method, Sandel manages to perfectly demonstrate how there is a shift

from morally good things and intentions to perverted and questionable market facts. Or in other

words, how market spoils morals.

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Book review: Michael Sandel, What money can’t buy? Damien ACCOULON

The third chapter of the book is in that regard exemplary of how Sandel processes. He first

exposes the case: a big company has earned money after the death of one of his low-range

employees because a life insurance had been placed on him. The family of the dead man did not

receive any money. This is the starting-point Sandel takes to denounce the developing system of

janitor insurance, the process when life insurance is taken out by companies on their employees -

tending to turn employees into common products (almost properties of a company). But Sandel is

always moderate in his discourse. When the comparison with the nineteenth century’s system of

firms would have been easy to do, he does not push too far and thus, his arguments remain

audible.14 He only exposes on an objective-like history of the janitor insurance system that became

popular in the 1980s, first justified by the cost of supplying high-qualified workers and then

extended to the whole workforce.

From this evidence that thanks to this system, the death of an employee enriches the company,

Sandel then moves to the viaticals system, where ill people can sell their life insurance, implying

that the investor is betting on a quicker death of the contractor. Indeed, despite the fact there is

contentment from both parts, viaticals remain very debatable (especially because it speculates on

the worsening of diseases).15 Reversing the system of life insurance, Sandel shows haw a shift is

currently operating in things were a priori morally good but perverted by the invasion of market. As

market thinking has become diffused in the life insurance industry, it became a ‘death insurance’

industry.

Flying to another example of the ‘market disease’ in society, the author then emphasises that

the example of online gambling on celebrity’s deaths is a concerning issue and very morally

reprehensible but not that far from death insurance - which has the only difference to be related to a

14
Ibid., p. 67
15
Ibid., p. 69

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Book review: Michael Sandel, What money can’t buy? Damien ACCOULON

person of the family. Sandel’s conclusion then goes without saying: “Today, markets in life and

death have outrun the social purposes and moral norms that once constrained them.” 16

The power of science

To convince the reader, Sandel uses scientific arguments. What Money Can’t Buy? is indeed a

nice piece of work, very well-referenced and calling various sources - from the very classic theorists

Backer or Keynes to several websites for more concrete examples that he then analyses in a

scientific way. The author for instance focuses on the booming in the use of the word “incentive” in

(notably) economic scholarships since early 1990s and its substantiation in “incentivise” a bit less

than a decade ago. Observing a booming in this word’s use, Sandel notes that even high-ranking

politicians now use it in their speech. He compares the massive use Barack Obama and David

Cameron make of these word and verb to the poor use their predecessors did.17

Sandel always refers to some scientific experiments, which follows his views. This is the case

of the very well-known experiment led by researchers in Israel about school late pick-ups18 or

another one led in Switzerland by economists about nuclear waste and the possibility of using

monetary incentive to make people accepting the undesirable policy.19 Guess what? Monetary

incentives are not efficient in comparison to the sense of civic duty. But it is not Sandel who says it.

These are results obtained by foreign experts; so, why not believe them? The scientific aspect

merged with the reference to other experts make the evidence even more powerful for a good reader

- and Sandel knows it.

He also makes a very convincing point on the Pentagon’s DARPA - which was an official

website where people could gamble on terrorist attacks or future political murders in order to

benefit from the ‘powerful capacity of the market to anticipate events’. This time, this is not an

experiment and some figures even demonstrated that it was wrong leading the whole US political

16
Ibid., p. 74
17
Ibid., p. 45
18
Ibid., p. 34
19
Ibid., p. 58-59

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Book review: Michael Sandel, What money can’t buy? Damien ACCOULON

class to denounce the programme. US politics are indeed considerate that is was a repugnant thing

to bet on other people’s deaths so you can profit. Sandel takes it as a confirming example that it is

important not to institutionalise this way of reasoning as market crowds out norms. If political

deciders consider that the national security cannot justify such moral deviance, why should people

do so?20

The language as a weapon

Make it easy

There is no ambiguity on the thesis of Michael Sandel’s book. He never pretends to be neutral

and always tries to convince the reader that what he writes is right because it is the ‘obvious truth’.

The use of rhetorical questions is thus highly demonstrative of how obvious (and efficient) can

Sandel be (e.g. “Can all human action be understood in the image of a market?”;21 “Would you try

to buy some? Not likely.”22). This method of often asking easy-like questions allows the author to

keep the reader aware that he has to think about what is said and ‘helps him’ to think in a way that

Sandel control. In other words, it sums up the problem Sandel wants to underline while making it

easy to understand - so easy that it looks like it is obvious when really these are highly complex

issues.

Play with words

To enforce his point, Sandel makes a great use of pejoratively connoted terms like ‘gambling’.

He refers a lot to emotions thanks to various examples dealing with all the very sensitive aspects of

our society: life and death, disease, blood, children even the cherish sport to demonstrate how

money tends to pervert the society. The payment to the sterilisation of US drug addicts or African

20
Ibid., p. 77
21
Ibid., p. 28
22
Ibid., p. 48

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Book review: Michael Sandel, What money can’t buy? Damien ACCOULON

HIV-positive women by Harris is highly exemplary of how emotionally charged Sandel’s evidence

is.23

On the other hand, he counterbalances these scarring examples and badly connoted expressions

by positively connoted arguments like fairness (as opposed to corruption) when dealing with paid

blood giving. This emphasises the contrast between the fairness of a free blood-giving system and a

paid one which incites the poorest people to give and corrupt the moral connotation of the gift,

resulting in an inefficiency of the payment (higher cost, lower quality, waste and less ethic). This

dichotomy between fairness and corruption then allows Sandel to assess Titmuss’s theory and

(obviously) conclude that introducing market rules in the blood giving system implies a growing

decline of altruism in society.24

The concluding metaphor between a muscle and morally good feeling (i.e. altruism, generosity,

solidarity and civic spirit) is an efficient way for Sandel to make his behavioural theory more

concrete and appealing.

Quality & Limits

Main implications of the book

Sandel’s arguments globally make good sense and strike the point thanks to his good method

we already discussed. I perfectly agree with most of his arguments and to the implications of his

book. Public policies and the society is general should be less market-driven and anxious of

economics but more about values and social norms. Even if he never explicitly mentioned it,

Sandel’s thesis appears to be that there is a lack of a competing vision of what the society should be

since the last few decades - as the wicked Communism is dead. As a result of this, there is now a

moral vacuum due to the emptiness of public discourse, which tracks the moral deviance. The

23
Ibid., p. 26
24
Ibid., p. 62

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Book review: Michael Sandel, What money can’t buy? Damien ACCOULON

logical conclusion is that there is a need to find a way to increase the moral strength of public

discourse (cf. the muscle-moral metaphor).

But in his very fine and well-referenced piece of work, Michael Sandel never really thinks

about what “the market” effectively is. Neither does he discuss any alternative to the allegedly bad

but overwhelming market. He takes for granted that the economy is market-driven and never

questions any alternative to this mode of dealing with the economy. That was not the purpose of the

book , which Sandel wanted to make concrete and dealing with the reality. That can be seen as a

weakness for many people. Rather, I see it is a lucid point.

Some limits

We already talk a lot about how good Sandel’s essay is. Let’s focus on a few weaknesses the

book may suffer from.

No counterpoint

There should be a counterpoint on what changed for the best, i.e. what became less market-

driven such as marriage which is no longer (in the vast majority of cases) a matter of dowries

accompanying the spouses. Indeed, Sandel makes things simple by only exposing the plain

economic theory on the subject and then follow through his arguments. But he never really thinks

about what is going better. Some stuff has not been yet been affected by the crowding-out effect of

market. While looking at the Internet, (always held as a bad thing by Sandel), should people not be

delighted that Wikipedia is based on solidarity and the sharing of universal knowledge? This lack of

counterpoint could maybe explain why Sandel does not deal enough with situations people are

experiencing in everyday life - with the notable exception of the point on adverts, where Sandel

underlines the increase of advertising in elements of the daily and private life (car, house, and even

bodies).25

25
Ibid., p. 90

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Book review: Michael Sandel, What money can’t buy? Damien ACCOULON

Some debatable arguments

 The use of incentives

Sandel also exposes some debatable arguments and positions. It is hard to agree on his position

about incentives, saying that using incentives turns an educational act into a give-take relationship.

Because incentive matters intensely in the education of children and the reality is harsh but true that

like cats and dogs, children often learn thanks to incentives like sweets or the promise of a game

after the plate of vegetables is eaten or the homework done. Life is hard. Incentives matter but - so

far - do not crowd out morals.

 The section about sport

The (large) part on sport is not really convincing as well for who one knows how things

evolved. It is true to say that for many reasons, money makes the game unfair and deprives it of part

of its interest. But saying that skyboxes are dividing stadiums between rich and poor people and

increasing the social gap is a false assumption. This is due to a profound misunderstanding of what

was the composition of the sports fan population before the 1960s. Indeed, at the very beginning of

modern sport (i.e. in the second part of the nineteenth century), this social phenomenon was the

leisure of the bourgeoisie, which had time for it, on the contrary to working-class people. When the

latter became interested in sport, supporting a team was no longer a proper activity for people of

culture, which rather went to the theatre or the opera (or other more expensive sports like sailing

and golf). This was the case till circa the late 1950s when low and high cultures began to merge.

And it is only since recently that CEOs really go to stadium to watch a match. In that respect, the

ideal of the “interclass feast of sport” is a social reconstruction of ‘the good old past’ by

protagonists. So, even if it is true that skyboxes lead to the new privatisation of parts of stadiums for

luxury boxes, increasing the price of tickets, it is false to say that stadium were ‘one of the few

places’ where classes were united together in a same cherishing of a game. In addition to this

historical mistake, one can also wonder why Sandel is dealing with the booming of sponsorship in

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Book review: Michael Sandel, What money can’t buy? Damien ACCOULON

sport whereas he does not say a word on the long-lived sponsorship on jerseys. This section about

sport is eventually too partial to be fully objective and significant.

 The ‘foreign’ examples

Moreover, Michael Sandel sometimes uses examples, which seem to be not really transposable

in North American societies. The study on late pick-ups has for instance been done in Israel and the

one about mass products acceptation was held in Switzerland. The latter is the only direct

democracy model in the world where citizens are used to vote directly for the common good and

dispose of long culture of direct democracy in a wealthy society. Could the results of this

experiment be transposed in another society, where decisions are made by representatives for a

poorer population? One might doubt it and that weakens Sandel’s point.

So, what’s next?

In his very descriptive and factual book, Sandel assumes that rules of markets crowd out morals

from society. Ok, and so what? The author deals with a lot of facts but never really provides his

view on how to fix these issues. He only explains that there is a need to find a way to strengthen our

moral and that a public (political?) debate should determine what are the values we want for our

society in order to change people’s behaviours. On this topic, Bishop Peter Selby raised a good

counterpoint when he explained that Sandel’s book could wrongly lead people to think that

changing our ideas could change our behaviours whereas it is our behaviours, which will change the

idea. To change, a behaviour has to be stopped to then influences values.26

It is obviously not the role of the book to provide a political agenda for a public debate and to

propose policies to counteract the crowding-out effect of money on morals. It however could be the

role of Sandel’s next essay to provide such ideas. What Money Can’t Buy? is definitely a perfect

springboard for the reader to think as well as for Sandel to write his next book.

26
Bishop Peter Selby, “What Money Can’t Buy: Public Debate with Michael Sandel”, London School of Economics
and Political Science, London: St Paul Cathedral, May 30, 2012

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