Blog by Hazel McHaffie
As I stood in the queue around
Charlotte Square waiting to go into the Main Theatre, a young man approached
the elderly gentleman in front of me to ask what this session was about. 'Money
and greed', came the answer. 'Ah, that's why there's such a big queue,' the
young man said, and walked away. The summary was only partly accurate; the
discussion was much more finely nuanced than that.
And I use the word 'discussion'
advisedly because American political philosopher, Michael Sandel, adopted
the same techniques he uses in his now famous course on 'Justice', at Harvard
University, a course which he's taught for two decades: a winning combination
of facts, case studies, and challenges to provoke active participation. Nearly
a thousand students pack the halls of Harvard to listen to him, and there his challenges
include questions like: Is torture ever justified? Would you steal a drug that
your child needs to survive? Is it sometimes wrong to tell the truth? How much
is one human life worth?
In his appearance at the EIBF he
examined one of the biggest ethical questions facing society today: What is the
proper role of markets, where are the boundaries, and how can we protect the
moral and civic goods that money cannot buy? Ruth Wishart was in the chair and instantly set the tone with her trademark crisp analysis
and wry sense of humour. Sandel himself was summed up as a 'rockstar moralist'; his most recent book What Money can't Buy as 'about what should be the
role of money and markets in today's society.'
Sandel is a charismatic speaker and
he brought the subject to life within seconds with his accessible tales of cash
incentives to drug-addict mothers, inducements of room-upgrades to prisoners,
advertisements for Viagra. The issues instantly have a clarity, immediacy,
humanity. We feel we are in the hands of a master who is both wise and
understanding.
Ah, but that deceptively engaging
approach veils a determination to get us to confront our own assumptions, our biases,
our lazy thinking. A market society has been developing for three decades, he
tells us, the values associated with it reach into every aspect of our lives,
but how conscious are we of its ramifications? He outlines actual examples of
financial incentives being used: to overweight people to get them to diet and
eat healthily; to a Swiss mountain village to encourage them to accept the
dumping of nuclear waste close by; to children to encourage them to get good
grades or read books or write letters of thanks. On each topic the audience are
asked to vote. Specific members of the audience are called on to identify
themselves and defend their stance - and he has an impressive ability to
remember names and speak of each person as if he knows them personally. Ruth
Wishart awards him Brownie points for 'getting
the audience to do half his work!'
But through the entertainment of the
exercises, Sandel teases out important philosophical issues. He demonstrates
that money can change the value of the goods being exchanged - for example, the
concept of gratitude behind a letter of thanks; or a kidney donated by a poor
peasant in India to a wealthy American businessman; or a prostitute fuelling
her drug addiction. Cash incentives can crowd out higher motivations like civic
duty, family welfare.
Society, Sandel concludes, must ask
how important these higher values are and then decide where market incentives
fit in. Democracy requires citizens to share in a common life, to care for the
common good. Markets are not so much about economics but about the threat to
this common good.
How could we get this genie back
into the bottle? Ruth Wishart asks. Sandel's answer is swift and incisive:
reinvigorate public debate. We need to argue together democratically, using
morally robust discourse, about how much we truly value the higher motivations
and values of life in questions about health and education and individual
rights and reproduction etc. And this underlying philosophy underpins Sandel's
answers to subsequent questions. We need to ask ourselves: Is it acceptable for
companies to hire homeless people to stand in queues in order to promote sales
of products? Is it tolerable for a poor person to sell a kidney to a rich
recipient in order to educate his children? Should taxes be used to price
unhealthy commodities out of the market? Should a 'sin tax' be levied against
cosmetic surgery? Is it enough to offset our carbon imprint when we drive or
fly? What are the core intrinsic values at stake here? How far are we eroding
our civic responsibilities to the higher causes? Which market incentives serve
the common good? What sort of a society do we really want to live in?
(This event was sponsored by an
independent investment management partnership (Baillie Gifford) who manage money
globally for both institutions and individuals.)
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