What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets by Michael Sandel

[Philosophy Now]

Michael Sandel’s critiques of our actions are under scrutiny by Philip Badger.

http://philosophynow.org/issues/98/What ... ael_Sandel

[Felasco]

In the end, it is the market’s neutrality about the value of our preferences – a neutrality shared by all varieties of liberalism – that is for him the undoing of our culture.

Well, the cold war is over, along with the epic dualistic battle between capitalism and socialism. The capitalists are becoming ever more socialist, while the socialists are becoming ever more capitalist, leading us towards a muddled middle ground where the once glorious economic debate is over ever smaller differences.

We've discovered that no system is perfect, because we are not perfect. Tinkering with economic systems is not likely to remedy that.

For progressive liberals like myself, the issue with prostitution is one of whether a woman’s involvement in the ‘oldest profession’ is truly voluntary. We worry that economic circumstance might drive women (and sometimes men) to actions they would otherwise feel repulsed by.

Um, the writer just described the majority of people who have to work for a living. Economic circumstance drives most of us to do things we find at the least annoying, but more often worse. Introducing the steamy subject of sex does little to clarify here.

It is certainly true that some women are victims of prostitution, but this would seem to arise mostly from the fact of it's illegality, which invites criminals looking for high profits in to the industry. Thus, it seems fair to question whether the moralists are really friends of the prostitute, or are taking a moral stance more out of a love of taking moral stances, an activity that's hardly unusual in progressive liberal culture.