What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets

摘要

In markets for organs, children, or licenses to kill endangered species, what does money actually buy? At first glance, the book's title seems not quite accurate, as it is chock-full of examples and cases that apparently document "almost everything is up for sale" (p. 3). However, money cannot buy the goods author Michael J. Sandel has in mind high-value, moral, or intrinsic goods: "Certain goods have value in ways that go beyond the utility they give individual buyers and sellers" (p. 33). Sandel continually refers to these values without being very explicit about them. His basic message seems to disapprove of "the expansion of markets, and of market values, into spheres of life where they don't belong" (p. 7).