'There are fewer and fewer things that money can't buy'

When Michael Sandel presented his book ‘What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets’, by using the assertion that 'There are fewer and fewer things that money can't buy', implied in itself that there are lots of things that the money already buy. And if the trend is growing or sloping down is debatable, I hope is the later. However, why we have toxic debts in the derivative market? why there is no a single banker in jail for the consequence of their mismanagement. They excuse themselves saying it was not crime nor fraud nor wrong doing done by them, and politicians agreed on that fallacy, it was just a systemic failure. I think money bought a lot of bails out to avoid the embarrassment of a judicial trial.

Greenspan said ‘the market model have an imperfection’. What exactly is the imperfection? Can be more invasion of markets the solution? more privatization of public spheres be the golden solution for what is an uninterrupted expansion of "monetization" of almost anything, by means of wrapping it up in magic marketing words. Can we stop them? shall we do that? In my opinion the answer is: that depends on where, when and how.


Shall be the profiting makers be in charge of our health, policing or education? Many will say ‘why not? if they are efficient and know how to run business’ – well, I disagree because the human is untrusted in collective responsibilities when they are pursuing individualistic rewards. Do you know the scandal of false positive occurred in Colombia, when army officers where toll by the Uribe’s administration that if they present corpses of guerrilla fighters they will receive a monetary reward “per head” of the killed. The consequence was that around 2000 Colombian youngsters were killed or disappears from the outskirts of some cities, and suddenly reappears as guerrilla fighter dressed up in combats fatigues far away in the south of Colombia. The media, the military and the businessmen in politics were into an expansion of market rules in a specific sphere, the security.

Agree, this is not new, and we are trading good and bad things since the beginning of history, but we always allow the barbarism be barbarism, the altruism be altruism, and the common good being that. But after the refashion of our human relation based on a monetised market patterns, neoliberal technicalities and the dominance of this way of thinking, everything that can be trade under a monetary value, then is acceptable to be tradable because is good for the market, and is “normalize” “socialise” “accepted”, but is it good for the betterment of humanity? Here is my answer again: that depends on where, when and how.

see: Michael Sandel: 'There are fewer and fewer things that money can't buy'