What Money Can't Buy

Should we pay children to read books or to get good grades? Is it ethical to pay people to test risky new drugs or to donate their organs? What about hiring mercenaries to fight our wars, outsourcing inmates to for-profit prisons, auctioning admission to elite universities, or selling citizenship to immigrants willing to pay? Isn't there something wrong with a world in which everything is for sale? In recent decades, market values have crowded out nonmarket norms in almost every aspect of life-medicine, education, government, law, art, sports, even family life and personal relations. Without quite realizing it, Sandel argues, we have drifted from having a market economy to being a market society. In "What Money Can't Buy", Sandel examines one of the biggest ethical questions of our time and provokes a debate that's been missing in our market-driven age: What is the proper role of markets in a democratic society, and how can we protect the moral and civic goods that markets do not honour and money cannot buy?

ISBN	184614471X	Pages	256
ISBN13	9781846144714 (What's this?)	Weight (grammes)	483
Publisher	Penguin Books Ltd	Published in	London
Imprint	Allen Lane	Height (mm)	240
Format	Hardback	Width (mm)	162
Publication date	26 Apr 2012	Spine width (mm)	26
DEWEY	174.4	Academic level	General
DEWEY edition	DC23

One of the most popular teachers in the world Observer Sandel is touching something deep in both Boston and Beijing -- Thomas Friedman New York Times The most influential foreign figure of the year China's Newsweek Few philosophers are compared to rock stars or TV celebrities, but that's the kind of popularity Michael Sandel enjoys in Japan Japan Times One of the world's most interesting political philosophers Guardian What Money Can't Buy selected by the Guardian as a literary highlight for 2012 Guardian America's best-known contemporary political philosopher ... the most famous professor in the world right now... the man is an academic rock star [but] instead of making it all serious and formidable, Sandel makes it light and easy to grasp -- Mitu Jayashankar Forbes India An exquisitely reasoned, skillfully written treatise on big issues of everyday life Kirkus Reviews Sandel is probably the world's most relevant living philosopher -- Michael Fitzgerald Newsweek Mr Sandel is pointing out [a] quite profound change in society -- Jonathan V Last Wall Street Journal Provocative and intellectually suggestive ... amply researched and presented with exemplary clarity, [it] is weighty indeed - little less than a wake-up call to recognise our desperate need to rediscover some intelligible way of talking about humanity -- Rowan Williams Prospect Brilliant, easily readable, beautifully delivered and often funny ... an indispensable book -- David Aaronovitch Times Entertaining and provocative -- Diane Coyle Independent Poring through Harvard philosopher Michael Sandel's new book ... I found myself over and over again turning pages and saying, "I had no idea." I had no idea that in the year 2000 ... "a Russian rocket emblazoned with a giant Pizza Hut logo carried advertising into outer space," or that in 2001, the British novelist Fay Weldon wrote a book commissioned by the jewelry company Bulgari ... I knew that stadiums are now named for corporations, but had no idea that now "even sliding into home is a corporate-sponsored event" ... I had no idea that in 2001 an elementary school in New Jersey became America's first public school "to sell naming rights to a corporate sponsor" -- Thomas Friedman New York Times A vivid illustration ... Let's hope that What Money Can't Buy, by being so patient and so accumulative in its argument and its examples, marks a permanent shift in these debates -- John Lanchester Guardian In a culture mesmerised by the market, Sandel's is the indispensable voice of reason ... if we ... bring basic values into political life in the way that Sandel suggests, at least we won't be stuck with the dreary market orthodoxies that he has so elegantly demolished -- John Gray New Statesman What Money Can't Buy is replete with examples of what money can, in fact, buy ... Sandel has a genius for showing why such changes are deeply important -- Martin Sandbu Financial Times Michael Sandel ... is currently the most effective communicator of ideas in English Guardian Sandel, the most famous teacher of philosophy in the world, has shown that it is possible to take philosophy into the public square without insulting the public's intelligence -- Michael Ignatieff New Republic

Be the first to write a customer review

The Moral Limits of Markets

Customers who bought this also bought: