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SHOULD EVERYTHING BE FOR SALE?

"Modern civilisation has been made possible in large measure by the contempt of the
conjunctions of those indignant moralists" (F. A. Hayek).

1. ARE THERE SOME THINGS THAT MONEY SHOULD NOT BUY?

The debate is over and the markets won, but...
- Market institutions, despite their shortcomings, are the best thing that ever happened to mankind.
- McCloskey sums up economic history: capitalism once flourished and now we are rich.
- Today, an American living at the poverty line has a standard of living 3 times higher than the
average American in 1900.
- Krugman: the material standard of living of the family at the poverty level in 1996 is as good as or
better than that of the median family in 1950.
- We owe to the market and economic growth the wealth we now enjoy that did not exist before
(the world's standard of living has increased 20-fold or more in the last 200 years).
- Wealth has been made, not just moved / The message of the development economics of extends
- Economic growth claims may be controversial 1, but not for experts
- Critics of the market society (Marx): "what matters most is what ordinary people have the real
capacity to do; that means giving them real resources to achieve their ends".
- However, this kind of prosperity is only found in market societies.

... what market society?

- Market: relationship where the mode of interaction is consensual exchange / voluntary exchange
of goods and services for valuable consideration.
1. How much should governments intervene and regulate the market?
2. What kind of property rights regimes and background legal institutions are best?
3. How much social insurance or other welfare programmes should governments provide to
protect citizens from market misfortunes?
4. What should and should not be part of the market economy? (scope)

Harmful markets? (is it morally wrong to sell the goods or services in each example)?
- Human billboards: Wit Inc. (Tokyo) paid girls to wear ads on their thighs. The CEO said "it's a
perfect place; boys want to see it and girls want to show it".
- WathcMyGF.com: You can buy subscriptions to websites that collect sexually explicit audio-visual
material sent by men from their exes, without their consent ("revenge porn").
- WhatsYourProce.com: Dating website where the user pays to have a date with promoted users.
There are related sites that match sugar daddies and sugar babies.
- Wigs: Extensions and wigs made from real hair sourced from women in poor countries
- The other express lane: Some airlines sell access to fast-track security and boarding lanes.
- Human eggs and surrogacy: Infertile or homosexual individuals and couples who wish to start a
family seek to buy eggs and hire surrogate mothers ($100,000 total payment).
- Product placement: Tony Stark drives an Audi because the brand paid for placement in the movie
- Bribery: Record companies sometimes pay radio stations for airplay. In the US this is legal (the
station must mention that it is a sponsored song, but it doesn't happen).
1
Some ideological and anti-scientific authorities, voters, professors in humanities departments
- Pay for Grade: Paying low-achieving students for good grades
Potentially harmful markets? (potential markets that some would like to legalise)
- Tiger farming: To save tigers from extinction and poaching, should private farmers be allowed to
raise tigers as livestock? Is there a moral distinction between pigs and tigers?
- Betting on terror: The Pentagon considered creating a policy analysis market, which allows betting
on when events (strikes, conflicts, etc.) would occur. Markets are designed so that the market
price of a bid indicates the probability of an event occurring. Proponents believe that security
agencies would use this information to save lives.

We are the critics of the critics

- Satz: "there is an intuitive distaste for certain market transactions that generate repulsion 2".
- Jane: "they are disputed products3; some things are inalienable in the market".
- Many "anti-marketisation theorists" 4have argued that the expansion of the market corrupts our
personal and civic character.
- The market is an unruly servant of the public good; commodification is an intrinsic effect of the
market mentality (everyone is out to make money - the market leaves nothing sacred).
- The authors want to show these theorists that their complaints are misplaced.
For the authors, there are legitimate moral concerns about how we buy, trade and sell, but not
about what we buy, trade and sell.

Why this debate matters

- Should governments allow people to sell their extra kidneys on the market?
- The government sets the legal price of organs at $0, well below the implicit market price.
Therefore, an economist would say that there is a shortage: whenever the legal price of a good is
set below the equilibrium price, the quantity demanded will exceed the quantity supplied.
- Many philosophers and economists thus believe that organ markets will eliminate scarcity.
- You don't give away a kidney to a stranger out of kindness, but you could do it for $100,000.
- Still, most shy away from the idea of selling organs (reasons: it commodifies the human body and
does not treat it with respect, or is seen as unduly exploiting the poor).
- There is a lot at stake in how we answer questions about the morality of the market.

2. IF YOU CAN DO IT FOR FREE, YOU CAN DO IT FOR MONEY.

Our thesis
- Everyone believes that there are cases where certain things should not be for sale.
- The unlimited scope of the market can be summed up as follows: if you can do it for free, you can
do it for money.
- If you can have, use, own and dispose of something (that does not belong to someone else) for
free, except in special circumstances, you are allowed to buy and sell it.
- The market does not transform permissible acts into impermissible ones; it does not introduce
errors where there were none.
- In discussing commodification, it should be explained why it is bad for something to be on the
market (examples: the market for child pornography and the market for the sale of nuclear
weapons).
- The problem is not the markets themselves, but the goods for sale, which should not be owned.
2
"Harmful markets
3
Contested commodities: organ and blood markets, sex, surrogacy, lifeline services...
4
"Commodification": a pejorative term; putting something up for sale that was not used to be bought or
sold before.
- Buying and selling is incorrect in certain cases (e.g. nuclear weapons and "peaceful" vs. "conflict"
countries or the average citizen), but not because it introduces incorrectness where there was
none.
- Wrongful Possession Principle: If it is inherently morally wrong for someone to possess, make or
use X, then it is morally wrong for them to buy or sell X.
- E.g. parents trying to sell naming rights to their children. The problem is that they are humiliating
names. Parents should not give these names to their children for free. The market for naming
children "Pepsi" is wrong because naming them "Pepsi" is wrong.
- Ex: it is wrong for students to buy essays from AstonishingPapers.com and submit them as their
own; the market for academic plagiarism is wrong only because academic plagiarism is wrong. If
you pay the site to write an essay with no intention of submitting it as your own, then it would be
perfectly permissible to buy that paper from the site.
- Market critics such as Sandel or Satz seek to identify things that adults are normally allowed to
own, possess, hold, occupy, provide or use, but are not allowed to exchange, sell and/or buy.
- Critics intend to discuss cases in which markets transform otherwise permissible activities (free of
charge) into illicit actions (commodification and profiteering).
- E.g. you can donate your kidney to a needy person if you wish, but not sell it (disrespectful).

Incidental vs. inherent wrongdoing

- There are cases where, under special circumstances, it may be improper for certain things to be
bought and sold that would otherwise be permitted from such transactions. Examples:
 Civic duty for profit: in the US, a Democratic activist pays someone who doesn't plan to vote
for the party to do so.
 Selling something behind the back of someone who was promised not to do so
- Most think they are different cases 5 (selling a vote would be intrinsically wrong vs. selling
something behind one's back is incidentally or accidentally wrong because one promised not to do
it)
- Ex: a customer plans to buy a baseball bat and loudly states that he will use it to beat his cheating
girlfriend to death (it would be wrong to sell the baseball bat in this particular situation).
- Ex: someone offers to sell you a stolen iPad for half price (it's wrong to sell something you don't
own).
- Ex: instead of taking an injured child to hospital, his father spends the hour trying to sell his car (he
should be doing something other than selling his car at the time).
- In the examples it is wrong to sell something not because they are things that inherently should
not be sold, but because there is some other moral duty that incidentally is linked to this situation.
- In that sense, the authors accept incidental limits to markets (the good is something that is
normally allowed to be sold). Promises can introduce obligations where there were none.
- The authors do not agree with the statement that votes or organs should not be for sale because
they are things that people should not buy or sell, even if no one is harmed.

Three types of limits

A. Limits due to the principle of undue possession: there are things that should not be inherently
owned or exist, therefore should not be bought or sold.
B. Incidental limits to the market: cases where certain people should not sell things they
normally could, because of special circumstances (promises, obligations, or danger).

5
Votes are not the kind of thing that should be sold; cameras are, except in special cases.
 C. Inherent limits to the market: There are some things that people can normally own or possess,
but which should not be for sale.
- A and B are boring and trivial forms of market boundaries (anti-marketisation theorists do not
have them in mind when they say that the scope of the market should be limited, but C).
- The authors accept A and B, but reject C (there are no inherent market boundaries 6).
- Conditional form: "If you are allowed to do X for free, then you can do X for money".
- In many cases, it is not known whether it is allowed to do X for free (e.g. choose to become a
slave).
- Whatever evil exists in voluntary paid slavery arises from the voluntary slavery, not the payment. If
it is wrong to voluntarily accept $1 million to be a slave, what makes it wrong is that one should
not choose to be a slave, not to be paid to do so.
- The market is not included in the explanation of what makes this transaction incorrect.
- E.g. a husband should not go to a prostitute without his spouse's permission; he should not have
sex with another person without his spouse's permission (the problem is not prostitution per se).
- E.g. one should not go to pimps who deal with trafficked women. The problem here is one of illicit
possession, as the trafficker should not own the women. It would be wrong even if the pimp
offered them for free, or even if he never tried to make money from the women.
- The market does not introduce errors where there were none.
- Ex: you can buy or sell an entry queue, unless there are incidental reasons or special circumstances
(if the location prohibits it or if you should be doing something else instead).
- E.g. it would be permissible to sell a kidney; although it is illegal in most places, the perpetrators
expect you to break this law if you can get away with it.
- Ex: buying a subscription to WatchMyGF.com is immoral because it is not a permitted business like
Playboy, as it uses stolen images (just like selling stolen watches).
- E.g. buying and selling the stolen images does not transform what would otherwise be a
permissible action into an improper action. It would be wrong to watch WatchMyGFW.com for
free.
- Ex: it is wrong to sell methamphetamine to school students and give it to them for free.
- Conversely, if there are cases where it would be permissible to permissibly possess
methamphetamine and give it to someone else, in those cases, we would consider it permissible
to buy and sell methamphetamine.
- The same incidental limits exist for any action that would otherwise be permitted.

From bad to worse, but from good to bad

- There are activities that people should not do and things they should not have, markets in those
activities can make them worse (e.g. child pornography is bad even if it is not traded).
- E.g. murder is wrong and a market for it could industrialise the production of hitmen.
- On the other hand, there may be cases where markets for bad things could make things better.
- E.g. a regulated and legal market for a new drug that should be avoided because it is poorly made
and only given away for free is likely to improve things. Suppliers can produce better quality and
purer drugs to avoid lawsuits, and use could decrease once the drug is legalised.
- Even if there are goods and services that should not be owned in the first place, it is an open
empirical question whether the commodification of these goods and services could improve the
status quo.

3. WHAT IS THE COMMODIFICATION DEBATE ABOUT AND WHAT IS IT NOT ABOUT?

6
"If you can have it, you can buy it; if you can give it to someone else, you can sell it to them".
 7 types of objections to commodification
- The authors propose a taxonomy of the types of objections people raise
A. Violations of rights by markets for some goods or services 7
B. Harm to innocent others, incentivised by markets for some goods or services 8
- A and B can impose limits on the market only because they determine what kinds of things people
can have in the first place. They limit the scope of what can be owned, not the market.
C. Exploitation of the vulnerable9, encouraged by markets for certain goods or services.
- There is a prima facie duty to avoid exploitation, so certain contracts are impermissible.
- However, this will only incidentally make certain market transactions immoral. There are no
inherently exploitative types of goods and services, only particular cases.
- For anti-marketisation theorists, sex work should not be for sale; however, they should
demonstrate that all such sales inherently involve illicit exploitation, otherwise they have only
demonstrated that they are being sold incorrectly (but they could be sold).
D. Misallocation of goods or services10 by the markets of some of them.
E. Paternalism11 in considering that markets for some goods or services lead people to make self-
destructive choices
- Whenever such arguments seem to succeed, they are only incidentally successful or show that
certain things should not be owned at all.
- Anti-commodification theorists are unable to demonstrate that there are things that are
acceptable to have or to do for free, but that should not be commercialised.
F. Corruption or development of faulty preferences or traits 12 resulting from participating in
markets for some goods or services.
- Most philosophers who object to the market for corruption have a general complaint about the
market, not about particular markets (they corrupt the majority and no one should participate in
them).
- What kind of evidence would be needed to support the claim that owning or trading in certain
products actually corrupts? What does such evidence actually show?
- When there is a problem, it is not the market per se that causes it. Those who raise the objections
lack sufficient empirical evidence to justify themselves. The market is ennobling.
G. Semiotic communication that expresses negative or incorrect 13 attitudes derived from
participating in markets for some goods or services. Regardless of the above objections,
allowing a market in a good or service X is a form of communication that expresses an attitude
that is incorrect or incompatible with the intrinsic dignity of X, or disrespect for some practice,
belief or relationship with which X is associated.

7
E.g.: stolen goods, child pornography, slaves
8
E.g. perhaps pit bulls should not be allowed to be sold because they are too dangerous (their owners
expose their neighbours).
9
E.g. markets in organs or sexual services allow the rich to take advantage of the poor. Some Marxists
oppose all wage labour (paying people is inherently exploitative).
10
E.g. Sandel believes that paid services to avoid queuing are immoral because they are not egalitarian (the
rich could pay but the poor could not). On the other hand, the children of alumni in schools that have lower
admission standards because their parents are expected to donate more money to the institution are not
allowed to pay.
11
E.g., the Center for Science in the Public Interest lobbies the government to ban the sale of certain foods
on the grounds that people will make unhealthy choices if they eat them.
12
E.g. buying Disney princess dolls for girls would reinforce faulty gender norms. Others believe that
participating in the market in itself tends to make us more selfish and insensitive.
13
Ex: The sale of organs would communicate the idea that the human body is a mere commodity.
- The meaning of markets is largely a social convention that can be judged by its consequences. If a
market in X produces good consequences but the semiotics of culture implies that markets in X are
bad, the semiotics should be changed, not the market banned.
- E.g., in American culture, the sale of organs denigrates the human body because that culture
ignores the sanctity of life. Whoever raises a semantic objection to selling glorifies vice.

Our strategy
- The authors base their arguments on common-sense moral principles that most people accept and
on the best available social science.
- Many libertarians argue that we have certain negative rights and are such that voluntary capitalist
acts between consenting adults should be considered morally permissible.
- Thus, the only existing limit would be exchange and transfer under coercion, which violates the
definition of what a market is (conceptual, rather than moral limit of markets).
- Other contemporary libertarians first argue that the truth about ethics boils down to self-
ownership, natural rights, non-aggression, consent and/or contract.
- Concerns about exploitation of weak agency, inequality and other concerns raised by anti-
marketisation theorists do not register as genuine moral concerns.
- Violations of rights are the only category of real moral force
- Anti-commodification theorists, as well as most philosophers and other practitioners who address
fundamental ethical issues, do not accept libertarian political morality.
- The authors have classical libertarian sympathies, and also share similar or identical basic moral
convictions as the anti-marketisation theorists.
- They want to show that the criticisms of anti-mercantilisation theorists are misguided, ill-founded,
confused, or lacking in philosophical or empirical evidence.
- They say: "if you can have X for free, you can buy it; if you can give it away, you can sell it".

Business ethics vs. what can be for sale

- The subject of the book (what kinds of things can be for sale) should not be confused with how
companies run their businesses (e.g. poor working conditions, dishonest sales techniques).
- In such cases, the companies in question should be boycotted; there would be a limit to the
markets.
- The problem is not what they offer, but that companies do not have ethical business practices.
- It could be that all companies of a particular type have bad business practices that they should all
be boycotted. There would be (incidental) reasons not to buy the products.
- Companies are subject to a range of negative duties (avoidance of coercion, harm, exploitation,
dishonesty, etc.) and can also acquire a range of positive duties.
- The debate on commodification is not about business ethics.
- Consider the following: (1) It is immoral to lie / (2) It is immoral to cheat / (3) It is immoral to steal
- From this one could deduce: (4) It is immoral to lie wearing a hat / (5) It is immoral to cheat
wearing a hat / (6) It is immoral to steal wearing a hat // If 1-3 are true, so are 4-6.
- However, the problem is lying, cheating and stealing (wearing a hat is incidental).

Regulated vs. free markets

- Is it morally permissible to have a market in any good or service vs. is it permissible to have a free
and completely unregulated market in that good or service? (two different questions).
- The authors' thesis is that there are no inherent limits to what can be bought and sold.
- This is compatible with the view that some or all things should only be bought and sold in highly
regulated markets. The following positions are consistent:
- Anti-market libertarian: G.A. Rothbard14 opposes all commodification; he believes that markets are
evil and that we should never buy or sell anything. But he also believes that people have absolute
negative rights against interference when buying and selling goods. He believes we have the right
to buy and sell, just as our right to free speech allows us to say the wrong things, even if doing so is
immoral. He believes that justice forbids any coercive regulation of the market, and also that
nothing should be for sale.
- Czar for commodity regulation: Cohen15 believes that what can be owned can be bought and sold;
he also advocates government regulation of every transaction.
- Even if no one is known to take such positions, they have a place in the space of logic.
- The issue of commodification is not about liberalism or the free market.

Law vs. ethics

- When it is said that certain things should not be for sale, a distinction must be made between legal
inadmissibility and moral inadmissibility (law and morality are not the same thing).
- Legal inadmissibility: the law should prohibit the purchase and/or sale of X
- Moral impermissibility: it is wrong (irrespective of whether it is illegal) to buy and/or sell X
- E.g. some anti-marketisation theorists believe that it is immoral to sell cocaine; also that
prohibiting drugs does more harm, so governments should allow people to sell it.
- The discussion in this book concerns whether buying and selling a certain thing is morally
permissible, not whether the law should allow it.

The right to sell vs. the justice of selling

- To own something is to have a property right over it (a set of separate rights).
- "Property rights" (Schmidtz): a set of rights that could include rights to sell, lend, bequeath, use as
collateral or even destroy. At the heart of any property right is the right to say "no" (right to
exclude non-owners).
- The central property right is the right of exclusion (e.g., my right to my house implies that I have
the right to exclude someone from using it; permission is needed to occupy my land).
- The right to exclude would be like the trunk of the tree from which the other rights grow as
branches.
- We have legitimate power to determine what happens to different things in different ways; the set
of rights attributed to that power varies, as does the strength of our rights.
- Ex: I have a cat and a guitar, but my power over the cat ("guardianship") does not allow me to do
as much with it as my ownership of the guitar does. My property right to my guitar includes the
right to destroy it at will on a whim; my right to my cat does not include that right.
- Certain property rights involve restricted covenants: you can buy some things, but lack the
corresponding right to sell them, or you have limited rights to sell.
- Ex: I have a licence to use many forms of software, but as part of the purchase I agreed that this
licence does not include the right to resell the software once I have finished.
- What do you have the right to do with your property vs. what is the right thing to do with your
property? (the two are distinct)
- In general, if you have the right to do something, this does not presuppose that it is morally right
to do it.
- Rights refer to what it is morally permissible for others to do to the rights holder (e.g., I am given a
guitar and I have the right to destroy it, which no one should prevent me from doing; if I did so, I
would be acting wrongly for hurting the feelings of the person who gave it to me).
14
"The genetically engineered child of Marxist G.A. Cohen and libertarian Murray Rothbard".
15
"A different genetically modified child
- Ex: I have the right to join a neo-Nazi political rally and express hatred of Jews, but it would be
immoral to do so; no one should stop me from being a Nazi, but I shouldn't be one either.
- An anti-marketisation theorist might agree that people have a right to sell certain things, but then
claim that it is still immoral and wrong to buy and sell them, even though it is within people's
rights. They would then conclude that certain markets should be legal, even if they are profoundly
immoral.
- The authors seek to challenge the moral condemnation of markets; they argue that contested
product markets are not in the rights of individuals, but are morally permissible.