"What Isn't for Sale?" by Michael J. Sandel

Market thinking so permeates our lives that we barely notice it anymore. In the following article by Michael J. Sandel, political philosopher and the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of Government at Harvard University, attention is drawn to the fact that there is a difference between a market economy and market society, and that we as a society need to decide the limitations of markets. Specifically, Sandel argues that the great missing debate in contemporary politics is about the role and reach of markets. Do we want a market economy, or a market society? What role should markets play in public life and personal relations? How can we decide which goods should be bought and sold, and which should be governed by nonmarket values? Where should money’s writ not run?   

CAMBRIDGE - We live in a time when almost everything can be bought and sold. Over the past three decades, markets—and market values—have come to govern our lives as never before. We did not arrive at this condition through any deliberate choice. It is almost as if it came upon us.

As the Cold War ended, markets and market thinking enjoyed unrivaled prestige, and understandably so. No other mechanism for organizing the production and distribution of goods had proved as successful at generating affluence and prosperity. And yet even as growing numbers of countries around the world embraced market mechanisms in the operation of their economies, something else was happening. Market values were coming to play a greater and greater role in social life. Economics was becoming an imperial domain. Today, the logic of buying and selling no longer applies to material goods alone. It increasingly governs the whole of life.

The years leading up to the financial crisis of 2008 were a heady time of market faith and deregulation—an era of market triumphalism. The era began in the early 1980s, when Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher proclaimed their conviction that markets, not government, held the key to prosperity and freedom. And it continued into the 1990s with the market-friendly liberalism of Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, who moderated but consolidated the faith that markets are the primary means for achieving the public good.

Today, that faith is in question. The financial crisis did more than cast doubt on the ability of markets to allocate risk efficiently. It also prompted a widespread sense that markets have become detached from morals, and that we need to somehow reconnect the two. But it’s not obvious what this would mean, or how we should go about it.

Some say the moral failing at the heart of market triumphalism was greed, which led to irresponsible risk-taking. The solution, according to this view, is to rein in greed, insist on greater integrity and responsibility among bankers and Wall Street executives, and enact sensible regulations to prevent a similar crisis from happening again.

This is, at best, a partial diagnosis. While it is certainly true that greed played a role in the financial crisis, something bigger was and is at stake. The most fateful change that unfolded during the past three decades was not an increase in greed. It was the reach of markets, and of market values, into spheres of life traditionally governed by nonmarket norms. To contend with this condition, we need to do more than inveigh against greed; we need to have a public debate about where markets belong—and where they don’t.

Consider, for example, the proliferation of for-profit schools, hospitals, and prisons, and the outsourcing of war to private military contractors. (In Iraq and Afghanistan, private contractors have actually outnumbered U.S. military troops.) Consider the eclipse of public police forces by private security firms—especially in the U.S. and the U.K., where the number of private guards is almost twice the number of public police officers.

Or consider the pharmaceutical companies’ aggressive marketing of prescription drugs directly to consumers, a practice now prevalent in the U.S. but prohibited in most other countries. (If you’ve ever seen the television commercials on the evening news, you could be forgiven for thinking that the greatest health crisis in the world is not malaria or river blindness or sleeping sickness but an epidemic of erectile dysfunction.)

Consider too the reach of commercial advertising into public schools, from buses to corridors to cafeterias; the sale of “naming rights” to parks and civic spaces; the blurred boundaries, within journalism, between news and advertising, likely to blur further as newspapers and magazines struggle to survive; the marketing of “designer” eggs and sperm for assisted reproduction; the buying and selling, by companies and countries, of the right to pollute; a system of campaign finance in the U.S. that comes close to permitting the buying and selling of elections.

These uses of markets to allocate health, education, public safety, national security, criminal justice, environmental protection, recreation, procreation, and other social goods were for the most part unheard-of 30 years ago. Today, we take them largely for granted.

Why worry that we are moving toward a society in which everything is up for sale?

For two reasons. One is about inequality, the other about corruption. First, consider inequality. In a society where everything is for sale, life is harder for those of modest means. The more money can buy, the more affluence—or the lack of it—matters. If the only advantage of affluence were the ability to afford yachts, sports cars, and fancy vacations, inequalities of income and wealth would matter less than they do today. But as money comes to buy more and more, the distribution of income and wealth looms larger.

The second reason we should hesitate to put everything up for sale is more difficult to describe. It is not about inequality and fairness but about the corrosive tendency of markets. Putting a price on the good things in life can corrupt them. That’s because markets don’t only allocate goods; they express and promote certain attitudes toward the goods being exchanged. Paying kids to read books might get them to read more, but might also teach them to regard reading as a chore rather than a source of intrinsic satisfaction. Hiring foreign mercenaries to fight our wars might spare the lives of our citizens, but might also corrupt the meaning of citizenship.

Economists often assume that markets are inert, that they do not affect the goods being exchanged. But this is untrue. Markets leave their mark. Sometimes, market values crowd out nonmarket values worth caring about.

When we decide that certain goods may be bought and sold, we decide, at least implicitly, that it is appropriate to treat them as commodities, as instruments of profit and use. But not all goods are properly valued in this way. The most obvious example is human beings. Slavery was appalling because it treated human beings as a commodity, to be bought and sold at auction. Such treatment fails to value human beings as persons, worthy of dignity and respect; it sees them as instruments of gain and objects of use.

Something similar can be said of other cherished goods and practices. We don’t allow children to be bought and sold, no matter how difficult the process of adoption can be or how willing impatient prospective parents might be. Even if the prospective buyers would treat the child responsibly, we worry that a market in children would express and promote the wrong way of valuing them. Children are properly regarded not as consumer goods but as beings worthy of love and care. Or consider the rights and obligations of citizenship. If you are called to jury duty, you can’t hire a substitute to take your place. Nor do we allow citizens to sell their votes, even though others might be eager to buy them. Why not? Because we believe that civic duties are not private property but public responsibilities. To outsource them is to demean them, to value them in the wrong way.

These examples illustrate a broader point: some of the good things in life are degraded if turned into commodities. So to decide where the market belongs, and where it should be kept at a distance, we have to decide how to value the goods in question—health, education, family life, nature, art, civic duties, and so on. These are moral and political questions, not merely economic ones. To resolve them, we have to debate, case by case, the moral meaning of these goods, and the proper way of valuing them.

This is a debate we didn’t have during the era of market triumphalism. As a result, without quite realizing it—without ever deciding to do so—we drifted from having a market economy to being a market society.

The difference is this: A market economy is a tool—a valuable and effective tool—for organizing productive activity. A market society is a way of life in which market values seep into every aspect of human endeavor. It’s a place where social relations are made over in the image of the market.

The great missing debate in contemporary politics is about the role and reach of markets. Do we want a market economy, or a market society? What role should markets play in public life and personal relations? How can we decide which goods should be bought and sold, and which should be governed by nonmarket values? Where should money’s writ not run?

Even if you agree that we need to grapple with big questions about the morality of markets, you might doubt that our public discourse is up to the task. It’s a legitimate worry. At a time when political argument consists mainly of shouting matches on cable television, partisan vitriol on talk radio, and ideological food fights on the floor of Congress, it’s hard to imagine a reasoned public debate about such controversial moral questions as the right way to value procreation, children, education, health, the environment, citizenship, and other goods. I believe such a debate is possible, but only if we are willing to broaden the terms of our public discourse and grapple more explicitly with competing notions of the good life.

In hopes of avoiding sectarian strife, we often insist that citizens leave their moral and spiritual convictions behind when they enter the public square. But the reluctance to admit arguments about the good life into politics has had an unanticipated consequence. It has helped prepare the way for market triumphalism, and for the continuing hold of market reasoning.

In its own way, market reasoning also empties public life of moral argument. Part of the appeal of markets is that they don’t pass judgment on the preferences they satisfy. They don’t ask whether some ways of valuing goods are higher, or worthier, than others. If someone is willing to pay for sex, or a kidney, and a consenting adult is willing to sell, the only question the economist asks is “How much?” Markets don’t wag fingers. They don’t discriminate between worthy preferences and unworthy ones. Each party to a deal decides for him- or herself what value to place on the things being exchanged.

This nonjudgmental stance toward values lies at the heart of market reasoning, and explains much of its appeal. But our reluctance to engage in moral and spiritual argument, together with our embrace of markets, has exacted a heavy price: it has drained public discourse of moral and civic energy, and contributed to the technocratic, managerial politics afflicting many societies today.

A debate about the moral limits of markets would enable us to decide, as a society, where markets serve the public good and where they do not belong. Thinking through the appropriate place of markets requires that we reason together, in public, about the right way to value the social goods we prize. It would be folly to expect that a more morally robust public discourse, even at its best, would lead to agreement on every contested question. But it would make for a healthier public life. And it would make us more aware of the price we pay for living in a society where everything is up for sale.

"Economics in The Crisis" by Paul Krugman

Why was the economics profession unable to predict the financial crisis? Was the profession missing important historical insights and macroeconomic models?  Furthermore, why were economists conflicted in recommending economic solutions and public policy options? According to Paul Krugman, professor of economics and international affairs at Princeton University and Nobel laureate, the field of economics has much to offer during crises but became politically/socially/geographically divided and forgot basic macroeconomic theory. For example, particular groups of economists forgot important historical lessons from the 1930s, no longer taught basic macroeconomic theory and empirically tested models, and did not observe the changing institutional structure of markets (i.e. shadow banking system and increased leverage). 

PRINCETON - To say the obvious: we’re now in the fourth year of a truly nightmarish economic crisis. I like to think that I was more prepared than most for the possibility that such a thing might happen; developments in Asia in the late 1990s badly shook my faith in the widely accepted proposition that events like those of the 1930s could never happen again. But even pessimists like me, even those who realized that the age of bank runs and liquidity traps was not yet over, failed to realize how bad a crisis was waiting to happen – and how grossly inadequate the policy response would be when it did happen.

And the inadequacy of policy is something that should bother economists greatly – indeed, it should make them ashamed of their profession, which is certainly how I feel. For times of crisis are when economists are most needed. If they cannot get their advice accepted in the clinch – or, worse yet, if they have no useful advice to offer – the whole enterprise of economic scholarship has failed in its most essential duty.

And that is, of course, what has just happened.

In what follows I will talk first about the general role of economics in times of crisis. Then I’ll turn to the specifics of the role economics should have been playing these past few years, and the reasons why it has for the most part not played this role. At the end I’ll talk about what might make things better the next time around.

Crises and Useful Economics

Let me start with a paradox: times of economic disturbance and disorder, of crisis and chaos, are times when economic analysis is especially likely to be wrong. Yet such times are also when economics is most useful.

Why the paradox? Well, first of all, consider what economics can contribute in calm times.

The answer, I’d submit, is surprisingly little. OK, economists can explain why the system works the way it does, and offer useful advice about reforms that would make it better; there’s always use for good microeconomics.

But if you’re trying to make predictions, economists won’t have much to contribute. Take the case of exchange rates, one of my original home areas of research. In ordinary times, it’s very, very hard for structural models to beat a random walk – that is, models based on an attempt to track the forces moving the exchange rate, such as changes in prices and changes in monetary policy, are barely if at all better than the simple guess that tomorrow’s exchange rate will be the same as today’s. And it’s even harder to beat an experienced trader, who has been through many fluctuations and has developed both useful rules of thumb about price patterns and a strong intuitive sense of what comes next.

Economic modelers may be better placed to engage in policy analysis. But even here, experienced practical hands may have the better advice to offer; they know from experience what will soothe the markets, what will rile them, and as long as events remain within the range of their experience, this informal understanding may trump the inevitably simplified and stylized analysis of those who know the world through equations and diagrams.

But now let there be a severe disruption that pushes the economy into terrain experienced practical men have never seen – say, an environment in which credit markets collapse, or short-term interest rates on assets considered safe are pushed all the way to zero. Because there are large and normally unforeseen disruptions, the sheer unpredictability of events will mean many bad economic forecasts, so if you ask how nearly right economists are in their ability to predict events, they will seem to be doing very badly compared with calmer times. But the question you should ask is how economists are doing compared with those who use other ways to understand the world, and in particular how they are doing compared with sober, serious, experienced men in suits. And it is precisely in disturbed times that economists can and sometimes do offer dramatically better predictions and policy judgments than what we normally consider wise men.

Take, for example, the relationship between deficits and interest rates. It’s not an example chosen at random, of course; I believe that it gets to the heart both of the nature of the crisis we’re in and the terrible failure of economists – plus, not incidentally, it happens to be something I personally got right. More about that shortly. But for now, let’s just focus on what we should have known.

Most practical men, confronted with the prospect of unprecedented deficits in the United States, the UK, and elsewhere, extrapolated from their usual experience, in which increased borrowing drives up interest rates. And so there were widespread predictions of sharp rate rises. Most famously, perhaps, Morgan Stanley predicted in late 2009 that interest rates on 10-year US bonds, then around 3.5 percent, would shoot up to 5.5 percent in 2010; in early 2011 Pimco’s legendary head, Bill Gross – who had correctly predicted low rates in 2010 — predicted a rate spike by the summer. And in each case these views were very widely held.

But economists who knew basic macroeconomic theory – specifically, the IS-LM model, which was John Hicks’s interpretation of John Maynard Keynes, and at least used to be in the toolkit of every practicing macroeconomist – had a very different take. By late 2008 the United States and other advanced nations were up against the zero lower bound; that is, central banks had cut rates as far as they could, yet their economies remained deeply depressed. And under those conditions it was straightforward to see that deficit spending would not, in fact, raise rates, as long as the spending wasn’t enough to bring the economy back near full employment. It wasn’t that economists had a lot of experience with such situations (although Japan had been in a similar position since the mid-1990s). It was, rather, that economists had special tools, in the form of models, that allowed them to make useful analyses and predictions even in conditions very far from normal experience.

And those who knew IS-LM and used it – those who understood what a liquidity trap means – got it right, while those with lots of real-world experience were wrong. Morgan Stanley eventually apologized to its investors, as rates not only stayed low but dropped; so, later, did Gross. As I speak, deficits remain near historic highs – and interest rates remain near historic lows.

Crises, then, are times when economics and economists can and should really prove their worth. And I’d like to say that some of my friends and colleagues did; maybe some of them will say that I did OK, too. But one can’t say that of the profession as a whole. On the contrary, all too many of us had rejected the very kinds of analysis that were to prove so useful. And more than that, all too many actively opposed the policy measures the crisis called for.

Actually, let me talk a bit more about the failures of the economics profession in this crisis.

What Should Economists Have Known?

The most common accusation against economists in this crisis is that they failed because they didn’t see it coming. Even the Queen of England has demanded that economists explain their failure to predict the crisis. But I would actually defend my colleagues against assertions that this predictive lapse was, in and of itself, all that much of a failure.

To take the most absurd case, nobody could realistically have demanded that the economics profession predict that Lehman Brothers would go down on September 15, 2008, and take much of the world economy with it. In fact, it’s not reasonable to criticize economists for failing to get the year of the crisis right, or any of the specifics of how it played out, all of which probably depended on detailed contingencies and just plain accident.

What you can criticize economists for – and indeed, what I sometimes berate myself for – is failing even to see that something like this crisis was a fairly likely event. In retrospect, it shouldn’t have been hard to notice the rise of shadow banking, banking that is carried out by non-depository institutions such as investment banks financing themselves through repo. And it shouldn’t have been hard to realize that an institution using overnight borrowing to invest in longer-term and somewhat illiquid assets was inherently vulnerable to something functionally equivalent to a classic bank run – and, furthermore, that the institutions doing this were neither backed by deposit insurance nor effectively regulated. Economists, of all people, should have been on guard for the fallacy of misplaced concreteness, should have realized that not everything that functions like a bank and creates bank-type systemic risks looks like a traditional bank, a big marble building with rows of tellers.

And I plead guilty to falling into that fallacy. I was vaguely aware of the existence of a growing sector of financial institutions that didn’t look like conventional banks, and weren’t regulated like conventional banks, but engaged in bank-like activities. Yet I gave no thought to the systemic risks. (read more)