Elizabeth Anderson tells us about the ethical limitations of the market.
Look carefully to her description of market norms, we’ll want to assess what these have common with our economists’s descriptions of how the market works.
Her original point: The market is capable of trading only market goods, and when we try to trade other goods on the market, they get subverted. We will look at all sorts of common sense evidence for her thesis, as one example: the “brotherhood” that gets lost if you pay a fraternity brother to do your allotment of the house chores. I’ve got a full list below.
She points out that: Use value is the sort the market encourages. We have not talk about different types of values like this.
What does “use value” mean?
What are the other sorts of value she discusses, that are not “use value”?
What is the test to see if an item is an “economic” good?
When it comes to PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS Anderson writes that this sphere is in many ways a polar opposite to those listed above. The CENTRAL GOODS in a life are SHARED GOODS. We respond to these appropriately with GIFTS not TRADE.
Once we understand these concepts of hers, can we answer the following: the economy relates to our lives in what way?
It is really helpful to start with the conclusion on p. 45, then you know where she is going.
Try to think of objections to it. This is really important because I am a fan of hers, so may not be good at raising objections for us.
In class we will consider how integrity and the development of our preferences can be central to our being good people. Let us see if these are compatible with business and trade. This will be a new angle for us– but one that lets us think about ethics generally for a bit.
A partial nswer to the above question about “other values.” When it comes to PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS Anderson writes that this sphere is in many ways a polar opposite to those listed above. The CENTRAL GOODS in a life are SHARED GOODS. We respond to these appropriately with GIFTS not TRADE.
Examples on which to test the usefulness of Anderson. Is she right about there being particular “market norms.” In class, we’ll consider all of these examples, and try to keep a tally of the advantages and disadvantages to her way of explaining each of them. Add to the list if you like!
1. One woman wrote on my Starbucks Gossip page: “I gave up waitressing once upon a time when I caught myself assessing every single person I saw, whether customers, or just fellow citizens, even on the city bus, in terms of ‘what they were worth’ as tippers. That cold-heartedness scared me and I didn’t want to become a scab who could not even see the beauty in the weathered face of an elderly lady in a funny hat and five sweaters. PEOPLE matter.”
2. A happy marriage is a melding of two people in which neither asks him or herself “What would it be like to be alone? Who would you be without your spouse in your life?”
3.Jessica Simpson was best friends with her assistant, and now with her hairdresser.
4. It is unseemly (you might agree) when people fight about money, who owes who want, after they break up.
5. On his death bed, when his son Paul asked for two small Corot paintings, he replied by offering to sell them for $50,000.
6. Reported Navajo saying: A good father cannot also become rich.
7. Education is really nothing more than a status symbol or, at best, a validation of attendance that will allow the student/consumer to get some other goods of value such as a job. Students are not that interested in an education — they just want the cachet for four years of saying “I go to X University” For the parents sending the student to X University is like being able to park a new Cadillac in the driveway every year — “My little Johnny goes to X” They (and the student) don’t really care whether little Johnny learns anything while he’s there.
8. Women with paychecks and their greater options.
9. Princeton, Harvard students’ dorm-cleaning service sparks controversy. COPYRIGHT 2005 Financial Times Ltd.
A student-run dorm cleaning service that has attracted controversy and national media attention might soon come to Princeton University.Fraternal entrepreneurs Matthew Kopko ‘08 and Harvard University sophomore Michael Kopko plan to launch DormAid at both Princeton and Harvard next month. Currently available only at Boston College, DormAid hires professionals to vacuum, dust, wash, organize and otherwise spiff up dirty dorm rooms. The company made national headlines after an editorial in the Harvard Crimson urged a student boycott of DormAid. “By creating yet another differential between the haves and have-nots on campus, DormAid threatens our…
10. The sweetest gesture someone has ever made to you v. money gifts at weddings.
11. From last year’s The Economist (topic: organs, non-economic goods?)
As people in the rich world live longer and grow fatter, queues for kidneys are lengthening fast: at a rate of 7% a year in America, for example, where last year 4,039 people died waiting. Doctors are allowing older and more sluggish kidneys to be transplanted. Ailing, rich patients are buying kidneys from the poor and desperate in burgeoning black markets. Clandestine kidney-sellers get little medical follow-up, buyers often catch hepatitis or HIV, and both endure the consequences of slap-dash surgery.
The Iranian model
In the face of all this, most countries are sticking with the worst of all policy options. Governments place the onus on their citizens to volunteer organs. A few European countries, including Spain, manage to push up supply a bit by presuming citizens’ consent to having their organs transplanted when they die unless they specify otherwise. Whether or not such presumed consent is morally right, it does not solve the supply problem, in Spain or elsewhere. On the other hand, if just 0.06% of healthy Americans aged between 19 and 65 parted with one kidney, the country would have no waiting list. The way to encourage this is to legalise the sale of kidneys. That’s what Iran has done. An officially approved patients’ organisation oversees the transactions. Donors get $2,000-4,000. The waiting list has been eliminated.
Many people will find the very idea of individuals selling their organs repugnant. Yet an organ market, in body parts of deceased people, already exists. Companies make millions out of it. It seems perverse, then, to exclude individuals. What’s more, having a kidney removed is as safe as common elective surgeries and even beauty treatments (it is no more dangerous than liposuction, for example), which sets it apart from other types of living-organ donation. America already lets people buy babies from surrogate mothers, and the risk of dying from renting out your womb is six times higher than from selling your kidney.
With proper regulation, a kidney market would be a big improvement on the current, sorry state of affairs. Sellers could be checked for disease and drug use, and cared for after operations. They could, for instance, receive health insurance as part of their payment—which would be cheap because properly screened donors appear to live longer than the average Joe with two kidneys. Buyers would get better kidneys, faster. Both sellers and buyers would do better than in the illegal market, where much of the money goes to the middleman.
Instinct often trumps logic. Sometimes that’s right. But in this case, the instinct that selling bits of oneself is wrong leads to many premature deaths and much suffering. The logical answer, in this case, is the humane one.
12. OJ ’s book sales (topic: Democratic Voice or mere Exit?)
Common sense and good taste seem to have prevailed: FOX has decided to pull the plug on both its planned OJ Simpson book and television interview special, “O.J. Simpson: If I Did It, Here’s How It Happened.” News Corporation Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch said, “I and senior management agree with the American public that this was an ill-considered project. We are sorry for any pain this has caused the families of Ron Goldman and Nicole Brown-Simpson.”
