Eco 6 PDF

Michael Sandel - Are There Things Money Shouldnt Be Able To Buy.mp3 Speaker B Thank you very much. Thank you for coming. It's a great pleasure to be here. It brings back a lot of memories being back in Oxford. I was here for four years as a graduate student and being here tonight takes me back to th...

Michael Sandel - Are There Things Money Shouldnt Be Able To Buy.mp3 Speaker B Thank you very much. Thank you for coming. It's a great pleasure to be here. It brings back a lot of memories being back in Oxford. I was here for four years as a graduate student and being here tonight takes me back to the time when I rst arrived in Oxford almost four decades ago. They had a welcoming dinner for new students at Balliol College, which is where I was. The master at that time was a man named Christopher Hill, a renowned historian, and in his welcoming remarks he recalled his early days at Oxford as a young tutor. And he told us of his dutiful, but somewhat patronizing upper-class students back in those days. One of whom left him a ve-pound tip at the end of the term. Master Hill's point, I think, if I remember it correctly, was that times had changed and that we were not supposed to tip the tutors. Not that the thought had occurred to me before he mentioned it. But it does raise an interesting question. Why not? What's wrong with tipping the tutor? Maybe nothing if the tutor is an economist. After all, according to many economists, and also non-economists in the grip of economic ways of thinking, money is always a good way of allocating goods or even, I suppose, of expressing thanks. Now I assume that Christopher Hill disapproved of the tip because he viewed the monetary payment as an indignity, as a failure to regard teaching with the proper respect. But not everybody views money and teaching in this way. Adam Smith, for one, did not. He saw nothing wrong with compensating university teachers according to market principles. Smith thought that teachers fi fi Page 1 sur 27 should be paid according to the number of students their classes attracted. I think there's something appealing in this idea, myself. But Smith's argument was that for colleges and universities to pay professors a xed salary is a recipe for laziness. Especially, he said, where colleges and universities are self-governing under such conditions he thought the members... are likely to be, as he put it, very indulgent to one another, and every man to consent that his neighbor may neglect his duty, provided he himself is allowed to neglect his own. Now, where do you suppose that Adam Smith found the clearest example of the sloth induced by xed stipends in the University of Oxford? Which brings me to the subject I would like to discuss with you tonight, which is, are there some things that money should not be able to buy? And I'd like to approach this question by asking a prior question, a slightly different but related one. Are there some things that money can't buy? Are there some things that money can't buy, even if it tries? Now, why does this question matter? It matters because if you look around the world, over the past three or four decades, we've witnessed a quiet revolution. Today, there are very few things that money can't buy. Here's one of my favorites. If you're sentenced to a jail term in Santa Barbara, California, just in case you nd yourself in that predicament, and if you don't like the standard accommodations in the jail, and if you have the money, you can buy a prison cell upgrade for, how much do you suppose? Anybody? $70? Well, it is about that. It's a little bit higher. How did you know that? You know, the law of the law. The London Eye used to be lit up blue at night. Maybe you've seen it. But no longer. Now, the London Eye is lit red. Do you know why? Coca-Cola has bought the naming rights and the branding rights to the London Eye. And so Coca-Cola insignias appear in each carriage. And the red CocaCola, the red Coca-Cola, the red Coca-Cola, lighting will illuminate the skyline of this modern icon. fi fi fi Page 2 sur 27 There are more serious aspects of life where market values and market thinking predominate. Take the way we ght our wars. Did you know that in Iraq and Afghanistan, there were more paid military workers? contractors, private contractors on the ground than there were US military troops. Now this isn't because we had a public debate about whether we wanted to outsource war to private companies. Somehow it just happened. In recent decades we've drifted from having market economies to becoming market societies. The difference is this, a market economy is a tool, a valuable and effective tool for organizing productive activity, but a market society is a place where almost everything is up for sale. It's a way of life in which market thinking and market values increasingly in ltrate or come to invade every aspect of life, family life and personal relations. Health, education, the media, politics, law, civic life. And the question I would like to discuss with you tonight is whether we should worry about this and if so why? Now one way of thinking about whether we should worry about becoming market societies is to ask where markets belong and where they don't. And to think about that question, let's begin by asking the question, are there some things money can't buy? Surely there are at least a few even today. Friendship for example, suppose you want more friends than you have and let's say you nd it dif cult to acquire them in the usual way. It might occur to you to buy a few but if you're nodding does that mean you've already considered buying a few? that possibility. But you would quickly realize, I think, that it wouldn't work. Somehow we know, we sense, that a hired friend isn't the same as a real one. fi fi fi fi Page 3 sur 27 Somehow the money that would buy the friend dissolves the good we seek. So friendship is something money can't buy. But what about social practices that are expressions of friendship or personal relations. In China I read about a company in China called the Tianjian Apology Company. If you need to apologize to somebody and a strange lover maybe or a business associate but you can't quite bring yourself to do it. Apparently you can go to the Tianjin Apology Company and hire someone to do it for you. The slogan of the company is we say sorry for you. Or, take another example. Wedding toasts, wedding speeches Have some of you had the experience of being asked maybe not many of you yet being asked to deliver a wedding speech or a wedding toast for a friend. Anyone had that experience? before I feel it can be kind of of honor, but it can also be anxiety provoking, especially if you're not a very con dent speaker and you're not quite sure how to choose the right words. Well, today there's help. There are companies, online companies, where if you nd yourself frozen with fear at the prospect of writing a powerful, moving wedding speech, you can go online, you can enter some information about your friend, about the couple, about how they met, about how long you knew them, about whether you want a funny speech, or a tear-jerking, very moving speech. You put all this information in, you send it in, and within three business days, you get a wedding speech, custom written, just for you, for how much money? Nonsense. do you suppose? Do you know that one also? It's actually a bargain. $149 including postage and handling. $1,000. Well maybe the people writing these speeches are not the most talented writers I don't know. So in a way a wedding toast or an apology is something that money can buy or can it? And the way to think about this is to ask how would you feel if someone sent you a apology or if at your wedding your best friend delivered a moving wedding. fi fi Page 4 sur 27 wedding toast to you, so resonant and poignant that it brought tears to everyone in attendance. And then you learned later that he had bought this wedding speech online for $149. Would it diminish the value? Probably it would, and the test of that is if you bought such a wedding speech. would you announce that fact as you were about to deliver it? Probably not. So, apologies and wedding toasts, these are examples of goods that, strictly speaking now, money can buy, but as expressions of friendship, if it's known, that the thing was bought, the meaning and value of the good, of the gesture, of the expression is to that extent diminished, tainted. Now this interesting feature about expressions of friendship and personal relations can help us think about other contested cases of commodi cation, putting things up for sale. There's a debate in many parts of the world, for example, about whether there should be a free market in kidneys and other human organs for transplantation every year. Thousands of people die waiting on lists in desperate need of a kidney transplant to survive. Many economists and others say the supply generated by altruism is not enough. The supply generated by altruistic donations is too small. So why not use the market, let people buy and sell kidneys to increase the supply, save lives. Other people object. Other people nd it morally objectionable. Now, well, let's just see what people in the room think about this question. If it were up to you, should there be a free market in buying and selling kidneys and other human organs or should there not be? How many say yes? And how many say no? The majority say no. Let's hear the objections, those of you who object. What would be your objections, quickly, to the buying and selling of kidneys. Who will give, who will articulate the reason? Yes. Stand up so we can hear. And we do actually have microphones, if we can get... Can we get the microphone runners, maybe on this side? we can, tell us quickly why you would object. Speaker G fi fi Page 5 sur 27 Very poor might actually sell their kidneys to like sort of make ends meet, help their families. I think that people could be used in that way. Speaker B People might be exploited, especially if they're, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Especially if they're desperately poor. Yeah. And why is that someone might say, well, but it must be worth it to them. What would you say to that? Speaker G It seems like the people who are buying the kidneys from them are taking advantage of the fact that they know that those people have no other options. Speaker B These people have no other options. And so, and what's your name? Speaker F Anna. Speaker B Anna? Yeah. So Anna objects on the grounds that in many cases, the people doing the selling will have no other options, which I think you mean suggests, tell me if I've got it right, that, that what seems to be a free choice, an act of consent, a voluntary deal, isn't all that voluntary. Speaker G Yeah, that makes sense. Speaker B So, Anna, I was, I was just repeating what I thought you said. That's good. That's good. So thank you for, all right, so there's one objection. There's one objection. Now, let's suppose in order to see whether there are any further, any other objections independent of Anna's. Suppose we lived in a more equal society, or at least in this society or in a world where no one was desperately poor in the way that many people are today. And so in such a world, would there still be any objection to buying and selling kidneys? Is there someone who would, who would nonetheless have an objection? Yeah. Stand up. Speaker A People, presumably kidneys would be quite expensive. And so even though people aren't desperately poor enough to need to sell them, there'd Page 6 sur 27 be people that could buy them and people that couldn't buy them. And therefore it's similar to the situation you have with healthcare in the States at the moment. You have a state whereby people who are ill, if you have enough money, you can get yourself cured. And if not, you can't. Speaker B So the, the access to a kidney would be conditioned on the ability to pay. Yeah. Speaker A Rather than anything universal. Speaker B Which you think would be unfair. Speaker A Yes. Speaker B All right. That's good. Thank you for that. Now let's, let's see if we can imagine that we distributed the income and wealth in a society to deal even with that inequality. In, in an equal, hypothetically in an equal society, would there be any remaining, remaining objection or would both of these objections be put to rest? Is there any further reason? And those of you up in the gallery can also offer a reason if someone has one, independent of the worry about inequality and the coercion and the desperation and the exploitation built into background conditions of inequality. What would be a further reason? Who else has a reason apart from that? Or, or does that deal with all of the problems? Yes. In the back. Stand up. Pro t motive might force or might incentivize some suppliers of kidneys to basically produce shoddy kidneys that don't perfectly match with the recipient. And, and so might cause unnecessary health problems for the recipient and also might result in poor quality surgeries for the donor and for the recipient. Because the doctors or the brokers might be trying to make money and cut corners with safety. Yeah. And with health. Good. What else? What, what were you going to say? I would say that even in a fair economic society, people can still be exploited by other means such as blackmail or violence. So, fi Page 7 sur 27 there would be inequalities that would allow people to be taken advantage of even in an economically equal society. All right. Now, similar arguments arise. So we have arguments to do with inequality. I'm, I'm pressing people to come up with objections, not because the inequality objection isn't powerful, but intrinsic objections to selling off body parts. And as you think about it, similar debates arise with regard to prostitution or the selling of sex. Some people favor the right to buy and sell sex. Others say it's morally objectionable because typically those who sell sex are not really doing it freely. They're under the threat of violence or desperate need for money or drug addiction. But same question could be asked there. If we imagined an equal society, then would there be no further objection to prostitution? What would you say in the back? Speaker G It could be that you should not give people the ability to sell their own body parts. Speaker B Because? Speaker G Because a kidney may be very valuable to yourself. So, you should not put people in a position that they indeed, you know, similar as selling sex or selling kidneys. Speaker B And why is that bad? Do you think it's somehow a violation of human dignity? Even if it's not done under desperation. What's wrong with it? Other speaker Um, Speaker G maybe there's somebody else who is better to answer but, It's alright. Speaker B It's alright. Perhaps you could say, Speaker G you know, a person is valuable as a whole and you cannot just take things away from it. Speaker B Page 8 sur 27 So it's instrumentalizing or objectifying our bodies or our sexuality to commodify those things. Alright, we better get you a microphone for that thought. Speaker E If you can sell everything, then is nothing sacred? There has to be something that we take outside of economic selling. It just seems wrong to break up parts of your body and put it on a marketplace. Speaker B It seems wrong to use our bodies as collections of spare parts to treat ourselves as objects for pro t. Likewise, selling sex, presumably. Speaker E Yes. So we think of humans as different to cars usually. Speaker B Different to cars? Well, we do. But what we're trying to get at is why? Exactly. And how? And you say it has something, what's your name? Speaker E Cynthia. Speaker B Cynthia. You say it has something to do maybe with the notion of sanctity or the sanctity of the human body and its integrity or of our sexual capacities and faculties. And that it's what? A kind of selling out or corrupting or degrading? If we do? Speaker E Yes. Speaker B We treat ourselves like cars. We treat ourselves like commodities, like things. Yes. Yeah? All right. Let's... Cynthia? Yes. All right. What about Cynthia's idea that even independent of the argument about inequality and about coercion, implicit or explicit coercion, there are some aspects of the human body, the person or human experience that should not be bought and sold because it objecti es us as human beings. It commodi es us. We turn ourselves into things like cars. And that's a violation of the sanctity of the integrity of the human body or of our sexual identities. Who disagrees with Cynthia about that and would like to respond to that suggestion? Testing. Speaker A fi fi fi Page 9 sur 27 I think if there's a demand and there are people dying because of a lack of body parts, Speaker B then that's a more important cause for concern. How does that apply in the case of prostitution, would you say? Speaker A If there are people who can't get sexual satisfaction through normal means, Speaker B and that's viewed as a right or as a basic human experience, then that's a service that's provided for them, I suppose. And so they should be able to buy it in the market. Do you agree? No. Tell us your name. Speaker A Omar. Speaker B Omar? Yeah. Stand up. What's your name? Man-ting. Man-he? Man-ting. Man-he. You disagree with Omar? Speaker F Not necessarily. I was just going to respond to her argument. Because I was just going to say, because we commodify ourselves all the time. We use our brain. We work as workers. As long as we work, we commodify ourselves. We use ourselves as things. So, kidney as a product and sex as a product is not necessarily different from our brain or the daily work we do. So that's what I was going to say. Speaker B Work is work. Speaker F No, it's not. It's just, you commodify yourself as a thing. Speaker B We commodify ourselves as things all the time, you're suggesting? Yes. Yes. So, and that's true whenever we use our bodies to make a living. Speaker F Yes. Speaker B Would you say that athletes commodify themselves? Yes. Use their bodies? Speaker F Page 10 sur 27 Yes. Not necessarily bodies, but brain or your intelligence. It's like, it's the same. Speaker B It's the same? Speaker F I think it's the same. Speaker B So, if you put your brain power to work, to make a living. Speaker F Yes. Speaker B In going to work for a hedge fund. A what? Other speaker Sorry. Speaker B Oh, that wouldn't involve much brain power, you don't think? Other speaker No, no, no, no, no. Sorry, I just didn't get it. Speaker F Sorry, I just didn't get it. Huh? Sorry, I just didn't get it. Okay. Other speaker What you were saying. Speaker B Or, let's say you go to work as a scientist. Okay. A research scientist. Speaker F Yeah, yeah. Speaker B That involves a lot of mental. Yes. Intellectual capacity, brain power. Yes. Do you think that someone who devotes himself or herself to scienti c research, let's say trying to discover, going into stem cell research, trying to cure diabetes, let's say, that person is doing what? Using and commodifying his or her brain? Speaker F I think you have to make another argument about how sitting kidney or sitting sex, is essentially different from sitting your brain or sitting your talent genes. Speaker B fi Page 11 sur 27 All right, that's a pretty good challenge. Cynthia, what do you say to that? Well, the argument is that your argument about sanctity, about using ourselves, our bodies, as things like cars, objectifying, the argument is, any time we use our talents, our intellect, never mind our bodies even. We are, so to speak, commodifying ourselves, using ourselves as means to make money, right? Speaker E That's very depressing. What about people who work in charity? If you're volunteering and you don't get money for what you're doing, why would you do it if your sole purpose is always to make money from your actions? Speaker B But is that the only way out? Do you want to concede the point, the claim, that all paid work, is on a par with prostitution in the sense that it involves using ourselves, objectifying ourselves, commodifying ourselves for money? Speaker E I guess, yeah, different things, talking about physicality or actually working. Is that where you're getting at? Speaker B Well, it does raise, this whole part of the debate raises, you know, an interesting moral and philosophical question about human dignity and also about human work and whether there are some forms of work that are consistent with human dignity, even the sanctity of the human person, your earlier point, or whether any time we enter the labor market and deploy our talents and skills for remuneration, is that a kind of selling out? Now, I suppose one counterargument might be that if the only reason you become a neuroscientist is for the money, then maybe there is something corrupting in that. If the only reason you become an athlete, if those are your gifts, or a musician, if the only reason you do it, or write books if you're a novelist, if the only reason you do it is to make money, maybe there is something degrading about that. But that leaves open the question whether other reasons Page 12 sur 27 fi fi Page 13 sur 27 fi fi for engaging in these vocations, these callings, can make work other than a kind of indignity, a kind of selling out, a kind of using ourselves. What's interesting, if you step back, and I want to, rst of all, I want to thank everyone who's joined in in this round of the debate about kidneys, prostitution, and work. Thank you, all of you, for doing that. If you step back from these examples, what is worth noticing is that there are two different kinds of issues here, two different kinds of philosophical claims, two different kinds of moral objections. One of them says, to know whether we should buy and sell stuff, we have to ask, how free really is the exchange? Or is there inequality in the background that makes at least some parties to these deals coerced, exploited, not really free? So that's the objection from inequality, an objection about freedom and coercion. But there is another range of questions about commodi cation, independent of the question of inequality and coercion, to do with what it means to respect ourselves, to honor human dignity, what it means to treat certain human capacities, as sacred, or at least as more than a mere thing. Now, in arguments, this distinction is important because of the two arguments, two reasons to worry about putting a price on everything. The rst is quite familiar. And you can see this if you listen to the debate we just had. It was the reason that came most quickly to people's minds, those who objected to some of these practices. There's unfairness in the background conditions of society. There's inequality. People aren't really choosing freely. And after all, what recommends markets is that markets seem to involve free choices, consent. But the less familiar, more dif cult objection has to do with the second objection, which has to do with the intrinsic good at stake in the integrity of the human body, which is, let's say, in the proper way of regarding our sexuality, in the proper way of treating ourselves with regard to the work we do. You might call this argument against commodifying certain things the argument from corruption, because what's allegedly corrupted, at least in some of these cases, is the proper way of treating or regarding certain aspects of ourselves. I'd like to change the example from the human body and from human work to a very different kind of example and see what you think. The environment. Wildlife conservation. There are, as you know, a great many endangered species, and we're not doing a very good job of protecting them. The black rhino in Africa is an endangered species, and for all the laws against hunting and poaching and killing black rhinos, the population is dwindling to, I think it's about 5,000 only. Many of them are in Namibia. Now, the Namibian Wildlife Authority has come up with a novel, market-oriented way of trying to raise funds for preservation of endangered species. They recently held an auction. They auctioned off, to raise money for wildlife conservation, they auctioned off the right to shoot one black rhino. And the idea is that the money derived from the auction will go toward the protection of the other black rhinos. Now, let's suppose that the money derived for the sake, now they conducted this auction globally. And the winning bid last year came, not surprisingly, you may think, from a trophy hunter from Texas. Who bid $350,000 for the privilege of going and shooting one black rhino. Now, defenders of the policy say, this is the best way, the most effective way of raising money to protect wildlife. And let's assume for the sake of argument that that's true. Suppose it were the best way of raising funds. Furthermore, they said, the winning hunter can't just go hunt any black rhino. He chooses. But we will choose a particularly old, ornery black rhino beyond the age of reproduction who's just wreaking havoc anyhow. And that's the one that will die to raise the funds to save the rest. And we'll do one a year or two a year. So let's assume this is an effective way of raising money to protect wildlife. How many here would favor this use of a market mechanism? And how many would object? How many would favor it? And how many would object? All right, it's a pretty good division of the house on the black rhino. Let's hear from someone who objects. What would be your reason? Anyone in the gallery want to? Yes. Okay. Go ahead. No, he is the one who gets to shoot it. It raises money to protect the others. And what do you mean Page 14 sur 27 when you say it doesn't solve the problem? What is the problem that it doesn't solve? But it raises money to protect the others. Let's say it really does raise a lot of money. Why isn't that good? Not the origin, but he thinks of himself as part of the solution. He's paying all this money. Somehow you nd it offensive, I think, but I'm pressing you to say why exactly. What's objectionable? What would you say? Yeah. Stand up so we can hear you. Put the microphone closer. Other speaker Okay. Speaker G If the popularity or the demand to shoot the rhino goes down and the only bid you get is $2 to shoot the rhino. Speaker B It would be a bad deal. Speaker G Has the actual value of the rhino changed from 350,000 to two? I don't think so. Speaker B Well, the intrinsic value won't have changed, but the market value will have changed. And then maybe it'll be a bad policy. But what's intrinsically wrong if anything is wrong? Well, the market value policy yes the woman toward the back yeah I think it's like the symbol you're Speaker G set you're like the message you're sending you're saying it's okay to kill a rhino whereas what you're trying to do really is protect them but you're saying Speaker B it's okay to kill all right and what's your name Rose Rose so the message the auction sends a message the market mechanism has an expressive signi cance of what conferring permission Rose says on killing a rhino now why is that bad because the cause you're trying to defend is saving the Speaker G rhinos and right now you're just auctioning off rhino I don't well it's fi fi Page 15 sur 27 Speaker B true and there is some thing you nd something distasteful yeah in the auction itself even if it Speaker G raises money that does good I think also there are other ways I mean that's all Speaker B right but put that aside let's assume for the moment there aren't better ways so there is a kind of valorizing or honoring the activity of shooting a rhino even making it a luxury good I suppose and there's a moral cost in that do you think Speaker G yeah what is what is the moral cost exactly I think it's just showing the Speaker B world that it's okay that it's okay and even a prestige item maybe all right what Speaker D do you say um I'm good um I think that it sends off a bad message in there in we would probably nd it morally distasteful with it let's say we auctioned off the right let's say it was a prisoner or an offender on death row that we auctioned off the right to kill a prisoner on death row we'd nd that pretty distasteful and with a human being I think that we do value animals in a in a way that even if it raised a lot of money killing the prisoner on death row and they are still gonna die and that you gave someone the honor of doing that we nd that distasteful and that as we honor animals that we don't we have laws against animal cruelty and things I think that we probably still ght we'd nd that morally distasteful there so in that way I think that the same way we nd that morally distasteful we should still nd this Speaker B morally distasteful that's an interest what's your name Josh Josh that's an interesting analogy now some will say no but I'm against that because some will say I'm against capital punishment in the rst place but you're imagining that the prisoner has already been condemned to die under some legal regime yes and so someone or other some of cial of the state will carry out that fi fi fi fi fi fi fi fi fi fi Page 16 sur 27 Speaker D the sentence exactly so let's say it was Saddam Hussein or someone they would they were on death row we gave off the right to do that and so you you say even Speaker B if the result will be the same this prisoner will be executed that it would be objectionable to raise funds for the prison let's say by saying all right we'll auction off the right to what would it be to pull the leg of the prison lever on the electric chair Speaker D to pull the lever uh auch it could be just whatever I mean up to their choice really once you've auctioned off the right to that I think they can choose how they do it Speaker B right right yeah you don't want to let your imagination run too all right so now let's hear from a defender of the Rhino auction and see if you can answer defender the arguments of Rose and Josh about the expressive the I suppose it's an instance of this corruption argument, isn't it? It's corrupting. Exactly, exactly. And it carries a moral cost. It's corrosive of the proper way of regarding endangered species or even convicted prisoners. Who has, who disagrees with that idea and has a counter argument to it? Yeah, see if we can get you a microphone. Speaker C Oh, thank you. So I think the argument is based on some sort of using the this promotion of an end as instrumental to the end itself. So in the sense that we don't want to promote killing animals and therefore the auction is bad thing. But we don't want to promote killing animals because we want to save animals. And we're saving animals the most ef cient way by sacri cing a rhino in order to save others. Right. So therefore, I I think the It doesn't really matter then if we if we promote a bad purpose since we're achieving the end Speaker B we're trying the most ef ciently by doing so. And what's what's your name? Paul. Paul. But Paul, what would you say to Josh's fi fi fi Page 17 sur 27 counterexample about which would you say Paul that it's all right on ef ciency grounds to auction off the right to execute the convicted prisoner? Speaker C Maybe not. I I would say maybe not, no, I would say that we thought we come to a split whether there is for example, it would be utilitarian if I use that word the best to achieve the best global outcome to save the most amount of rhinos but yet there might be some intrinsic value in the life of one rhino that we can't trade for the lives of others, for example, Speaker B and that's why you wouldn't auction off the right to kill the prisoner. Speaker C so I I suppose there is some distaste that as well. I would probably not auction out that because that would probably not achieve the purpose. Speaker B But let's suppose it raises more money for the jail that could be used to educate, for the educational programs, for the health clinic. Lots of good utilitarian consequences. Speaker C Yeah, what the heck, then I'll do it. Yeah, that sounds good. Other speaker You would? Wow. All right. Okay. Speaker B Okay, Paul has a principled position and you follow the principle wherever it leads. There's something admirable in that. Speaker C Something. Speaker B Something. All right, one other example very quickly. There are lots of schools that struggle with the challenge of motivating kids, especially from poor backgrounds. To study hard, to get good grades, to read books. And so they've experimented in some places with using a market mechanism, paying kids to read books or get good grades or to score well on tests. They've tried this in New York, in Chicago, in Washington, D.C. fi Page 18 sur 27 $50 for an A, $35 for a B. It would be like $50 to get a rst, something like that. You think you should give up? Other speaker I think you should give up. Speaker B In Dallas, Texas, they have a program that pays young kids, eight-year-old kids, $2 for each book they read to encourage kids to read more books. Now, if you were the head of a school and this proposal were brought to you, how many think it would be worth a try? And how many would reject it on principle? Show of hands. How many think at least it's worth a try? And how many would object? Another pretty good division, relatively even division. Josh objected. Rose, did you object? I didn't see. You don't know. Paul? No. You were for it. Right. If you're going to auction the right to hang the guy, you'll certainly pay the kid to read it. All right. Those who objected. If you object, what's wrong with it? Yes. Speaker A Hi. Because I think if you think about it, you're actually incentivizing the wrong thing. You're not incentivizing educating yourself to alleviate the problems of social inequality by getting disadvantaged kids to read more, to do better because they've read more. You're incentivizing them to nish more books. You're incentivizing them to plow through their work, to plow through their reading without taking from them the messages, the ideas, the ideas that they're trying to get out of it. The ways of thinking that actually will be what allows them to succeed in life. So you're really not succeeding in your purpose at all, I don't think. Speaker B And you're incentivizing the wrong thing. What should we be trying to teach these kids if not to read more books? Speaker A Well, to, sorry, to learn more from them, to engage with them better. Speaker B And why will the money prevent that? Speaker A I'm sorry? Speaker B Why will the money prevent that? fi fi Page 19 sur 27 Speaker A Because when you're offering money for something, you're always offering money for something. You're always offering the money for a speci c measurable thing. Now, I don't think anyone's really developed a system of measuring learning. I certainly don't believe Oxford has yet. But accurately re ects how much you've really learned from a book. It's, there's always got to be a mark scheme. There's always got to be some kind of hoop you're trying to jump through. Speaker B And that diminishes the intrinsic good of learning, do you think? Speaker A Yeah, absolutely. I think it does. Speaker B Jumping through a hoop, getting paid, doing it for the wrong reason? Speaker A Yeah, exactly. Because I actually don't think it's something that's going to be a good thing. It's not necessarily that getting the good grades that, of course, providing money would encourage people to get, that gets them better jobs, that gets them doing better things in society. I think it's learning along the way. Speaker B Learning along the way for its own sake. Speaker A Yeah, partially. But also because I do think that really develops the way you're thinking. And I'm not sure that jumping through hoops necessarily does. Speaker B What's your name? Speaker A I'm Josh. Speaker B Josh. Who disagrees with Josh and can say why? Right here. Where? Okay. Yeah, we should go to the gallery again. Stay there. Speaker A Thanks. Other speaker fl fi Page 20 sur 27 It's just enough to just jumpstart the kids' interest in reading, in that sense. You know, although I do see a point about the fact that you're monetizing reading, you're effectively sending out the wrong message. But what if, you know, there's a small incentive. Speaker B It's just enough to get kids to just start learning. Other speaker Wouldn't that bring out the better concept in the sense that, you know, you get more people reading, you get, you know, you improve their knowledge in that sense? What do you talk about? Speaker A Okay. So you're kind of saying it's like a sort of priming the pump argument. You put a little bit in. You pay a kid $2 to read a book. They read the book. They like it. And they. Sorry. Sorry about that. Yeah, that's fair. You're sort of like priming the pump. You're saying you pay a kid $2 to read a book. He reads a book. He might like the book. Maybe even one in ten likes the book. And that justi es paying the $2. Yeah. Is basically the idea. Yeah. Well, I think the issue that I have with that is that in the vast majority of cases, I think it would probably fail. And I think if that's the case, if that's what you think the merits of such a scheme would be, then why not say, right, have $10 for reading the rst book and then nothing after that? And do you genuinely think that that would promote the results you're hoping it would? Other speaker I mean, the price is negotiable. Speaker A We can haggle on that. Speaker B Well, but then it would matter a lot. I thought that that rst book were a really good one. Speaker A Precisely, yeah. Speaker B All right. So the issue here, Josh's objection, it's similar in a way to the objections we heard in the case of the rhino sale and even the executing the prisoner sale in that Josh worries that the money changes and degrades the meaning of the activity. fi fi fi Page 21 sur 27 In this case, learning, it substitutes a monetary incentive that crowds out the higher motive that we want kids to acquire when we teach them. And then, what's your name? Jeremiah. Jeremiah counters with the argument that he agrees that there are higher and lower motivations, worthier and unworthier, more and less worthy. Reason. Reasons to read or to learn. But Jeremiah says, maybe the money will bring the kids to read for the wrong reason, what he would concede to be the wrong reason, but they might, might fall in love with reading and then no longer need to be paid. Is that the idea? All right. But what's interesting about this exchange is that both sides of this argument, accept in principle the argument from corruption. Both sides of this argument accept that there are higher and lower ways of valuing goods and social practices, in this case, learning. And that reading, learning for pay or for an instrumental reason or maybe even just to get a better job, is missing the higher reason, the higher motivation for learning and reading. So, I want to thank everyone who's participated in this round. Well done. And I want to see what conclusions we can draw from this. How seriously should we take what I've been calling the argument from corruption? There, we've considered a lot of hypothetical cases, some actual cases. But in the world, we can see examples of the way in which introducing money or cash incentives can change the meaning of goods. In Switzerland, not too long ago, they were trying to decide where to locate a nuclear waste site. No community wants one in its backyard. And they identi ed a community, a small town in the mountains. Switzerland is likely to be the safest place. But under the law, they had to consult and get the approval of the residents of the town. And so before the decision was made, they did a survey and they asked the residents of the town, if your town is chosen, would you vote to approve the nuclear waste site? Despite the risk, 51% said yes. Then they asked a second question. They said, now suppose that Parliament chooses your town. And offers to pay, in compensation for the risk, each resident of the town an annual sum. fi Page 22 sur 27 Up to 6,000 Swiss Francs, I think it was. Then would you vote to approve? Now how many people do you think were willing to accept it? 80? 30? 20? Other guesses? 90? It went down, it dropped in half from 51 to 25%. When money was offered. Now from the standpoint of standard economic analysis and price theory. Maybe even the economic theory that some of you are studying in PPE. This is an anomaly. Because according to price theory, when you offer people money to do something, or increase the offer, more people, not fewer, are willing to do that thing. So what happened? What do you think happened here? It was the same people, same survey. What accounts for this? What would you say? Say it again? It suggests an increased risk. That could be true, that the people might think, gee, if they're willing to pay me all that money, this must be riskier than I thought. It could be that. But they tested for that. And it turns out that the estimate of the risk was about the same before and after the offer was made. So there must be some other reason to account for this. What would you say? I mainly believe it has to do with consent. That we all have an instinct not to do rst and secondly. So in the rst case, they voluntarily said that they would like the nuclear site to be situated there. However, when they were not given the situation to say no, because the government said this is where the nuclear will be situated, then that's when they all disagree. But in both cases, they were given the choice. Both cases, they were asked their consent. So why did only half, why did the number drop in half when they were offered money? Civic duty. So when they were rst asked, what's your name? Robert. So Robert says that when they were rst asked, the 51% were responding out of a sense of civic duty. They weren't offered any money. But they said this is, maybe they thought the country needs the energy, the waste has to go somewhere. We're willing to accept that risk for the sake of the common good. But when money entered the picture, it changed the meaning of the question. What had been a civic question became a pecuniary one, a deal. A nancial deal. A nancial transaction. fi fi fi fi fi fi Page 23 sur 27 And people were not willing to, as they now saw it, to sell out the safety of themselves and their families for money. They asked people who changed their minds, why did you change? And they said, we didn't want to be bribed. Somehow the money felt like a bribe. And so, as in a lot of the examples we were discussing earlier, thank you, Robert. Here's a real life example. Where? Introducing a cash incentive, a market mechanism, changed the meaning of the activity, of the question. One other example, another study by some economists. In Israel, every year school children gather and, as part of a school project, go door to door collecting donations for charity. One year, some economists did an experiment with these students. They divided them into three groups. The rst group was given a short motivational speech about the importance of the charitable causes and sent on their way. The second group, given the same speech, but offered a 1% commission on the money they raised. And the third group, same speech, but a 10% commission. Which group do you think raised the most money for charity? Just call it out. What do you think? The second one, the 10% group. The rst? The unpaid group. The rst group, the kids who were not paid, raised the most money. Now, standard price theory was vindicated to this extent. The kids who were offered 10% did raise more money than the kids offered 1%. But the kids who were offered no commission raised more money for charity even than those who were offered 10%. Something similar seems to have been going on here. As Robert proposed in the Swiss nuclear waste site case, introducing the commission, the money, changed the meaning of the activity. What had been a moral and civic project, part of their civic education, was now a job, a kind of job. And that crowded out the money, the cash incentive, crowded out the money. Now, the intrinsic motivation to raise funds for the sake of the causes, not for the sake of making money. What conclusions can we draw from the discussions we've had and from these examples? I think two. One is about economics. fi fi fi Page 24 sur 27 Economists today often conceive their subject and teach it as if economics were a value-neutral science of human behavior and social choice. But if money and markets and market thinking and market values sometimes change the meaning of social practices, if markets sometimes crowd out non-market norms worth caring about, then it's a mistake to think that we can decide when to use market values. What are the markets and when not to use them without engaging in normative questions? What non-market norms will be crowded out? And should we care? Should we care if people are taught that black rhinos are objects of sport to be shot or prisoners? Should we care if these kids are reading books, not for the love of it, but for the money? What will be the effect? Economists often assume that markets are inert, that they do not touch or taint or change the meaning of the goods they exchange. And this may be true enough if we're talking about material goods, cars, toasters, at-screen televisions. If you give me a at-screen television or sell me one, it will work just the same either way. The nature of the good, the value of it, won't change. But the same may not be true when markets enter social life and civic life. So if economics is not a value-neutral science of social choice, if it is unavoidably normative, then economics should not be conceived as a separate autonomous discipline. It should be reconnected as it once was with Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill and Karl Marx, despite their differences. Economics should be seen as a sub eld, as a branch of moral and political philosophy, not as a value-neutral science. That's one conclusion. A second is about politics and about the way we conduct our public debates. In recent decades, the same decades when we've been in the grip of a kind of market triumphalist faith, public discourse, has been emptied, has been hollowed out of larger ethical meaning. Citizens in democracies around the world are frustrated with politics, with politicians, with the alternatives being offered by political parties, and I think with good reason. Because what passes for political discourse these days consists of, of what? fl fi fl Page 25 sur 27 Of either narrow managerial technocratic talk, which inspires no one, or, when passion does enter, shouting matches, often bitter partisan shouting matches, where people shout past one another. What's missing is engagement with big ethical questions, big normative questions, questions of values, questions about the right way of valuing goods and social practices. Now, why do we shrink from these questions? People want politics to be about big things that matter. Why do we shrink from them? Why are we drawn to market, market logic, in a way that extends to every sphere of life? I think for a pretty deep reason. It's not just that we believe markets deliver the goods and rising prosperity and GDP. It's not just that. Markets seem to be a value-neutral way of deciding big public questions. Markets seem to provide us a way of avoiding the hard work of debating and arguing in public about competing conceptions of the good life, about how to value goods, about what's sacred and what's not. About what human dignity consists in. About how to value our bodies, our sexuality, teaching and learning, the natural world. We disagree about these questions. And because we disagree, we tend to say, we don't want to bring those moral disagreements into politics. That's the appeal of markets. It's their seeming neutrality, but it's a spurious appeal. Because what it's saying and what it leaves us with is an empty politics, a moral vacuum in our public discourse that has contributed, I think, to the frustration with the terms of public discourse in democracies around the world. And so what I draw for politics from the discussions we've had is just as economics can't be value-neutral, neither should be politics or our public discourse. What we need to do to put markets in their proper place is to morally reinvigorate the terms of public discourse. To develop, to overcome the bad habit of outsourcing our moral judgments to markets. And to develop an idea of mutual respect that does not say, I respect people with different views by avoiding those views. What we need is a politics of mutual respect that engages with competing views, including competing moral and even spiritual conceptions. That's the only way we'll put, Page 26 sur 27 we'll be able to keep markets in their proper place. But more than that, this kind of morally reinvigorated public discourse, I think is the only way we're going to lift up the terms of public discourse and begin to build some moral and spiritual resonance and purpose into democratic public life that these days is pretty thin. You're good at this. I can tell from the discussions we've had only in this hour. And so my proposal, it's really an invitation, but also a provocation and a challenge to you, is to those of you who are interested in public life to take seriously the project of reinvigorating democratic citizenship by, helping us nd our way to a morally more engaged kind of public discourse than the kind to which we've become accustomed. Thank you all very much. fi Page 27 sur 27