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What Are the Moral Limits of Markets?

To what extent do we want to live in a society where everything is up for sale? 
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I’ve been working for some years teaching and writing about political philosophy.  And my last book about justice was really a about what’s a fair way to distribute the good things in life? 

This book, What Money Can’t Buy, is about a particular question related to justice, but also more broadly to the question of the good society.  To what extent do we want to live in a society where everything is up for sale? 

We’re drifting, I think, in the direction of being such a society.  But sometimes markets, money and market values can erode, or crowd out, important non-market values and so, in a way, this project about trying to spur a debate about the moral limits of markets tries to reconnect economics and economic thinking to political philosophy, debates about justice and the good society in general.

In Their Own Words is recorded in Big Think’s studio.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock

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