What Money Can't Buy
by Michael J. Sandel · first published 2011
75% recommend25% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Accessible discussion of the moral limits of markets, examining where market logic corrupts non-market goods like health, education and civic life; suits general readers interested in ethics and economics.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
Should we pay children to read books or to get good grades? Should we allow corporations to pay for the right to pollute the atmosphere? Is it ethical to pay people to test risky new drugs or to donate their organs? What about hiring mercenaries to fight our wars? Auctioning admission to elite universities? Selling citizenship to immigrants willing to pay? In this book the author takes on one of the biggest ethical questions of our time: Is there something wrong with a world in which everything is for sale? If so, how can we prevent market values from reaching into spheres of life where they d
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…the philosophers. Here's a critique by Martha Nussbaum that I find pretty convincing: https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?arti... Michael Sandel has a video series on INET called What Money Can't Buy based off his book. It's easy to watch and it's basically him prodding at some of the philosophical assumptions made in our usual economic reasoning. I find it quite good and it does have big name economists…
on “Economics: The User's Guide by Ha-Joon Chang” ↗…most of them are good, UK focused Bad Blood by John Carreyrou; if you've ever been in a startup you'll recognize bits of this story, but it quickly gets out of control in novel ways. Astonishing story. What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets by Michel Sandel The Attention Merchants by Tim Wu Who we are and how we got here by David Reich: ancient DNA and human history The Book of Why by Judea Pearl; liked it…
on “Ask HN: Favorite nonfiction books of 2018?” ↗You don't really need to blame someone, but if your life capital depends on hacks like that, then it's a sad life. Tangentially, Michael Sandel's "What money can't buy" is a good book about the morals of markets: You could even bolster your online popularity by hiring some good-lookgin "friends" for your facebook page - for 99 cents per friend per month
on “Website Sells Fake Facebook Girlfriends” ↗…own the policies have an interest in the death of the other. 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viatical_settlement. A great book on this subject and how the prevalence of markets has degraded norms is What Money Can't Buy by Michael Sandel (http://www.amazon.com/What-Money-Cant-Buy-Markets/dp/0374203...).
on “What Real-Time Gambling Data Reveals About Sports” ↗…fundamental failure of capitalism and market economics that caring professions (such as nursing and teaching) will inherently be underpaid and undervalued. There's a pretty good discussion of this in What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets by Michael J. Sandel. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0374533652/donhosek
on “Suicide rates are rising among U.S. nurses” ↗Michael Sandel's "What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets" covers it quite well. Markets create unfairness by systematically disadvantaging the poor when money becomes necessary to obtain certain goods or quality of goods. Market…
on “"Hate brings views": Confessions of a London fake news TikToker” ↗While I think most on this site would applaud efficiently allocating anything, there are some drawbacks to efficiently allocating things strictly for money. Michael Sandel, author of What Money Can't Buy, argues pretty eloquently the economic and social cost-benefit to pricing things like a placement in line, or a spare room in a house. To extend one of his examples, Airbnb gives you a hard-cash price…
on “Airbnb And The Unstoppable Rise Of The Share Economy” ↗It's not really an ad hominem. I took it more as the reasoning in "What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets."
on “Teaching college is no longer a middle-class job, and everyone should care” ↗