Description
Book SynopsisMay you sell your spare kidney? May gay men pay surrogates to bear them children? Should we allow betting markets on terrorist attacks and natural disasters? May spouses pay each other to do the dishes, watch the kids, or have sex? Should we allow the rich to genetically engineer gifted, beautiful children? May you ever sell your vote?
Most peopleand many philosophersshudder at these questions. To put some goods and services for sale offends human dignity. If everything is commodified, then nothing is sacred. The market corrodes our character.
In this expanded second edition of Markets without Limits, Jason Brennan and Peter M. Jaworski say it is now past time to give markets a fair hearing. The market does not, the authors claim, introduce wrongness where there was not any previously. Thus, the question of what rightfully may be bought and sold has a simple answer: if you may do it for free, you may do it for money. Contrary to the conservative consensus,
Table of Contents
1. Are There Some Things Money Should Not Buy? 2. If You May Do It for Free, You May Do It for Money 3. A Taxonomy of Possible Objections 4. It’s the How, Not the What 5. Semiotic Objections 6. The Mere Commodity Objection 7. The Wrong Signal and Wrong Currency Objections 8. Objections: Semiotic Essentialism, Minding Our Manners, and What It Says When You Buy Love 9. The Corruption Objection 10. How to Make a Sound Corruption Objection 11. The Selfishness Objection 12. The Crowding Out Objection 13. The Surprising Truth about Blood Markets: How Paying for Blood Crowds In Altruism 14. The Immoral Preference Objection 15. The Low Quality Objection 16. The Civics Objection 17. Objections Solved by Market Design 18. Exploitation, Sweatshops, and the Living Wage 19. Consent, Desperation, and Coercion 20. Line Up for Expensive Equality! 21. Baby Buying: Adoption Rights and Designer Babies 22. Selling Civics: Vote Markets and Citizenship 23. Blackmail, Threats, and What We Owe to Each Other for Free 24. Associative Objections: Should We Boycott More People? 25. Anti-Market Attitudes Are Resilient 26. Dignity, Schmignity 27. Where Do Anti-Market Attitudes Come From? 28. The Pseudo-Morality of Disgust 29. Postscript
