PHIL 2230 MORAL PHILOSOPHY

DR. JOEL MADORE

ESSAY ON MARKET MORALITY

by
EMMANUEL MURRAY LECLAIR
201462793

NOVEMBER 17TH 2015

Are there things that money cant buy?

This essay aims at understanding some of the most common moral dilemmas that appear
in the modern market system. As M. Sandel would say, we are moving from having a market
economy to a market society1, and in that process, the line that would normally set the limits of
what money can do has been relatively broken. This entails a new way of life that is drastically
changing our relation with others and the world around us. As many social problems are
nowadays being solved with market solutions, it becomes hard to differentiate between the
intended function of tool and the potentially alienating aspect of money. I will look at two
particular issues of market morality, and assess both side of the spectrum. In both cases, the
arguments in favor of more market are libertarian and utilitarian. Libertarian argues that free
market promotes freedom through voluntary exchanges and utilitarian argues that free market
promotes general welfare, that everyone who engages in a voluntary exchange will get out as a
winner (win-win situations). I will try to show that, given the following situations, the bad
generally outweigh the good, that more market is not always preferable.

The first case relates to the civil war of 1861-1865 between the North and the South of
America. In order to recruit soldiers, the government first used a circumscription, meaning
anyone who was chosen had to go fight in the war. Because the circumscription was against
American individualist tradition, the government passed the union draft, where you could hire a
substitute to fight for you, in exchange of what the market asked at the time, around $1,500
1

Michael Sandel. 2012. What Money Can't Buy - the moral limit of markets. London School of
Economics and Political Science (LSE). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZafL7_CaMbg 9:5010:00.

(Sandel 76). Because it led to a situation where only the rich could avoid going to war, the
government passed a second draft, in which you could pay the government $300 to be exempted,
which still represented a year of wage for an unskilled worker (Sandel 76). Already, it is easy to
see libertarian and utilitarian arguing that such a system does not promote freedom and does not
contribute to the general welfare, and this is arguably why it has never been used again in
American history. Instead, the system that is now used is the market system, where the army is
made of volunteers. Anyone can join the army in exchange of a salary, and the demand and offer
are adjusted accordingly to the specific need of the army (if the army needs more soldiers, it
increases the wages to increase the demand and vice versa). For libertarians and utilitarians, the
market system is far better than the two other options, but it also lead us to two fundamental
questions: one regarding the idea of freedom of choice and the other regarding civic duty.
The first question relates to the argument that the free market is only free given a limited
set of options. While this is true for any market (clothes, food, etc.), it is greatly emphasized
when looking at the business of recruiting soldiers. Indeed, recent data about the American army
suggest that it is mostly people with less education, from poorer families and communities who
join the army, thus people with more limited job options (Sandel 82-83). It is surprising how the
problem of poor people fighting rich peoples war initially specific to the circumscription with
draft is also seen in a market system, and that is because the market does not solve social
problems of class coercion and economic disadvantage (Sandel 83). The market is not really
free because the outcome depends on the life circumstances of people who choose to join the
army. If they have a limited choice of good career options (often only minimum wage jobs), they
are more likely to join the army, which gives wages in the range of high education jobs.

The second question addresses the argument that war is a civic obligation, and that
everyone who is a citizen has the duty to serve his country, and that a volunteer army made by a
market undermines this obligation. I believe this argument leads to a lot of questions regarding
the idea of civic duty in our modern society, and more deeply the relation between man and the
state. Indeed, what is civic duty in a country where the relation between the state and its citizens
is almost nothing else than an economic relation of taxation? How can people serve in a war on
civic grounds then? Or at least, if civic duty is to apply, then the direct actors should serve first,
and the general population after. Regardless, the major problem here lies in the modern relation
between a population and the state, which is corrupted by money. As Rousseau perfectly stated,
true freedom only exists when citizens do everything with their own arms and nothing by means
of money (Sandel 87). Thus, not only does turning civic duty into a commodity undermines
freedom (which libertarian so vividly fight for), it also kills the sense of community and unity
within a country, which in turn kills civic virtue altogether. Public affair then is not a direct
business of the citizens anymore; its participation can be sold to anyone. With that in mind, it is
not surprising to witness the emergence of foreign legions and private armies.

This previous point of money being a source of corruption and degradation is also present
in the second case, the case of surrogate mothers. The difference lies in the sense that here
money degrades the good itself, a human being. As Sandel argues, all goods dont have the same
value and while bread, clothes and other similar type of objects are fit as commodities, human
beings are of much higher value, and turning them into commodities corrupts their value. Just
like an army made of volunteers replaces the norm of civic duty by the norm of the market,
surrogacy contracts replace the norm of parenthood by the norm of commercial production

(Sandel 98). Furthermore, it also degrades the surrogate mother because she is deprived of any
emotional bond with the baby, which means she is doing alienated labor. For me, this argument
of degradation is enough to refuse the idea of surrogate mothers altogether because putting
babies on the same pedestal as common objects is a large step towards a market society, in which
every aspects and activities are turned into a mere economic relation driven by the demand and
offer, from love and friendship to buying groceries. Lastly, there is another argument against
pregnancy for money, that is when a woman agrees to be a surrogate mother in a contract, she
does so with partial or tainted information, that is without knowing how she will feel when she
sees the baby for the first time. She might be informed of what can happen, but she does not
know her feeling until it really happens. This is why for many, such a contract is invalid in the
first place.

The examples of the recruitment of soldiers and surrogate mother have shown us clearly
that there are things money can but should not buy. We can then conclude that the arguments of
libertarians and utilitarians are wrong. Markets dont always promote pure freedom as we have
seen by looking at the composition of the modern American army and voluntary exchanges dont
always benefit everyone because such exchanges sometimes degrade one of the parties taking
part in it, as we have seen with the surrogate mother who is deprived from building an emotional
relation with her baby.