Entry Submitted by Charles at 6:43 AM ET on January 7, 2024
A few years ago, I read the book What Money Can’t Buy by Harvard professor Michael J. Sandel (published in 2012).
Professor Sandel asserted that the United States “has drifted from having a market economy to being a market society.”
“Too many of the good things in life,” Sandel claims, are corrupted or degraded if turned into commodities.”
And he provides the following examples of those things: family life, friendship, citizenship, health, education, public safety, national security, criminal justice, environmental protection, recreation, procreation.
Professor Sandel’s main point, though, is that the commoditization of society has resulted in a c--------n of democracy in American society. Against a background of rising economic inequality, he maintains, society is becoming increasingly “skyboxified” (a term he uses in the book to describe the rich building walls between themselves and the rest of Americans who have less and less influence). That’s corrosive to democracy.
The shift to a market society happened without debate. It was not a d--------c process, and Sandel warns that every other social change runs the risk of being driven by market forces, and not by d--------c debate, compromise, and cooperation.
The book is an easy read, and is mostly full of examples of ways in which Americans have allowed market forces to make decisions that are, at their core, moral ones. Choices that should be made collectively, with reasoned debate, in an open forum. You know, democratically.
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An example I can think of that was not in Sande’s book: I have noticed that my bank (and it is a Canadian bank, by the way) is no longer a “lender”. It has become, rather, a “provider of financial products and services”, which are aggressively marketed to “consumers of financial products” (formerly known as “borrowers”).
Merely semantic, I know that, but it is absolutely the result of the commoditization of society; the culmination of that transition from “having a market economy” to “becoming a market society.”
In his 2013 TED talk, entitled “Why we shouldn’t trust markets with our civic life”, Professor Sandel gives a nutshell (2 minutes) version of what he describes as the corrosive effect of a marketized society:
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If you wish to contact the author of a post, you can send us an email at voyagesoflight@gmail.com and we’ll forward your request to the author (if available). If you have any questions about a post or the website, you may also forward your questions and concerns to the same email address.
______________________________________________________
All articles, videos, and images posted on Dinar Chronicles were submitted by readers and/or handpicked by the site itself for informational and/or entertainment purposes.
Dinar Chronicles is not a registered investment adviser, broker dealer, banker or currency dealer and as such, no information on the website should be construed as investment advice. We do not support, represent or guarantee the completeness, truthfulness, accuracy, or reliability of any content or communications posted on this site. Information posted on this site may or may not be fictitious. We do not intend to and are not providing financial, legal, tax, political or any other advice to readers of this website.
Copyright © Dinar Chronicles
