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Keeping it in the family
Saturday, May 12, 2012
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Editor:

Am I the only one feeling the potential loss? Let me add my two cents about the Wexner family purchasing 1300 acres of public land surrounded by their private ranch (subdivision).

People, stop encouraging them — someone tell them no. This exclusive public BLM land offers a 3-mile hike at low elevation from the outskirts of the town of Carbondale up to the trails high on Mount Sopris. Our public trustees in Garfield and Pitkin county, the town of Carbondale, BLM, DOW, and U.S. Congress are being asked to sell and trade this valuable property away.

This property contains two peaks and three valleys that lead up Mount Sopris from Princecreek Road and Carbondale.

Ask yourself if Pitkin County or the Roaring Fork Valley can afford to lose three of its publicly held valleys — I say no way. So why do governments and NGOs back this deal? Because of money, a lack of perceived land value, and the current economic distresses of these agencies. The folks that want this deal have been and will be paid by the Wexner family. Simply and legally. The Wexners have been purchasing the players and surrounding properties for years with the goal of owning this public wilderness property.

I believe we need to add to our public lands not lose them. We want greater access to them, not to be selling them to the .1 percent. Fewer than 1 percent can afford to purchase such a large piece of public land just to shut out the 99.9 percent of the public that could use it. They then can sell off their surrounding properties as exclusive subdivision lots.

Good job keeping our country’s land inheritance in the family — the Wexner family.

Glenn Auerbacher
Basalt

http://www.aspendailynews.com/section/letter-editor/153085

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/may/11/too-rich-to-queue

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Too rich to queue? Why markets and morals don't fitWe are moving towards a world where everything is up for sale, from standing in line to the right to pollute – and that's bad for all of us, says Michael Sandel in this extract from his new book, What Money Can't Buy
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Michael Sandel
guardian.co.uk, Friday 11 May 2012 23.01 BST Comments (153) Illustrations: Francesco Bongiorni for the Guardian. Click on image for full illustration.
Nobody likes to queue. It's long been known that, in fancy restaurants, a handsome tip to the maître d' can shorten the wait on a busy night. Such tips are quasi-bribes and handled discreetly. No sign in the window announces immediate seating for slipping the host a bank note. But in recent years, selling the right to jump the queue has come out of the shadows and become a familiar practice.

What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets
by Michael Sandel
Buy it from the Guardian bookshopSearch the Guardian bookshop
Tell us what you think: Star-rate and review this bookLong queues at airport security checkpoints make air travel an ordeal. But not everyone has to wait. Those with first- or business-class tickets can use priority lanes that take them to the front of the queue for screening. British Airways calls it Fast Track, a service that also lets high-paying passengers go first at passport and immigration control. But most people can't afford to fly first class, so the airlines have begun offering economy passengers the chance to buy queue-jumping privileges as an à la carte perk – at Luton Airport, for example, customers can pay £3 to go to the head of the security queue.

Critics complain that a fast track through airport security should not be for sale. Security checks, they argue, are a matter of national defence, not an amenity like extra leg room or early boarding privileges; the burden of keeping terrorists off aeroplanes should be shared equally by all passengers. The airlines reply that everyone is subjected to the same level of screening; only the wait varies by price. As long as everyone receives the same body scan, they maintain, a shorter wait in the security line is a convenience they should be free to sell.

Amusement parks have also started selling the right to avoid queues. Traditionally, visitors may spend hours waiting to board the most popular rides and attractions. Now, Alton Towers and other theme parks offer a way to avoid the wait: for anything from £10 to £85 a person, Alton Towers will sell you a Fastrack pass that lets you go to the head of the queue on selected rides. At Thorpe Park an Unlimited Fastrack ticket costs £70, while at Legoland £70 will pay for an Ultimate Q-Bot, reserving your place in a virtual queue for your favourite rides with 95% less wait time. Interestingly, amusement parks often obscure these special privileges they sell. To avoid offending ordinary customers, some parks usher their premium guests through back doors and separate gates; others provide an escort to ease the way of VIP guests as they cut in. This need for discretion suggests that paid queue-jumping – even in an amusement park – tugs against a nagging sense that fairness means waiting your turn.

If you're put off by queue jumping at amusement parks, you might opt instead for a tourist sight, such as the London Eye. For £18.90 (£9.90 for children), you can ride in one of 32 glass capsules and enjoy a spectacular view of the city. Unfortunately, there can be a long wait for a capsule, so for £28 a person, you can buy a Fast Track ticket that offers priority boarding. Shelling out £115.20 for a family of four may seem a steep price, but as the ticketing website points out, Fast Track tickets are ideal for customers "who want to make the most of their day".

To an economist, long queues for goods and services are wasteful and inefficient, a sign that the price system has failed to align supply and demand. Letting people pay for faster service at airports and amusement parks improves economic efficiency by letting people put a price on their time.

Even where you're not allowed to buy your way to the head of the queue, you can sometimes hire someone else to wait on your behalf. Each summer, New York City's Public Theatre puts on free outdoor Shakespeare performances in Central Park. Tickets for the evening performances are made available at 1pm, and the queue forms hours in advance. In 2010, when Al Pacino starred as Shylock in The Merchant Of Venice, demand was especially intense.

Many New Yorkers were eager to see the play but didn't have time to queue. This predicament gave rise to a cottage industry – people offering to wait in line to secure tickets for those willing to pay for the convenience. The line-standers advertised their services on various websites. In exchange for queueing up and enduring the wait, they were able to charge their busy clients as much as $125 (£77) a ticket for the free performances.

In China, the business of paying people to queue has become routine at top hospitals. There, the market reforms of the last two decades have resulted in funding cuts for public hospitals and clinics, especially in rural areas. So patients from the countryside now journey to the major public hospitals in Beijing, creating long waits in registration halls. They queue overnight, sometimes for days, to get an appointment ticket to see a doctor.

The appointment tickets are a bargain – only 14 yuan (about £1.20) – but it isn't easy to get one. Rather than camp out for days and nights, some patients, desperate for an appointment, buy tickets from touts. The touts hire people to queue for appointment tickets and then resell them for hundreds of pounds – more than a typical peasant makes in months.

There is something distasteful about touting tickets to see a doctor. For one thing, the system rewards unsavoury middlemen rather than those who provide the care. Doctors could well ask why, if appointments are worth so much, most of the money should go to touts rather than to them, or to the hospitals. Economists might agree and advise hospitals to raise their prices. In fact, some Beijing hospitals have added special ticket windows, where the appointments are more expensive and the queues much shorter.

But regardless of who cashes in on the excess demand – the touts or the hospital – the fast track system raises a more basic question: should patients be able to jump the queue for medical care simply because they can afford to pay extra? In airports, amusement parks and hospital waiting rooms, the ethic of the queue – "first come, first served" – is being displaced by the ethic of the market – "you get what you pay for".

And this shift reflects something bigger: the growing reach of money and markets into new spheres of life. Consider the proliferation of private schools and hospitals, and the outsourcing of war to private military contractors. Consider the eclipse of public police forces by private security firms – especially in Britain and the US, where the number of private guards is more than twice the number of public police officers.

Consider, too, the reach of commercial advertising into schools; the sale of "naming rights" to parks and civic spaces; the marketing of "designer" eggs and sperm for assisted reproduction; the outsourcing of pregnancy to surrogate mothers in the developing world; the buying and selling, by companies and countries, of the right to pollute.

Why worry that we are moving towards a society in which everything is up for sale? For two reasons: one is about inequality; the other is about corruption. In a society where everything is for sale, life is harder for those of modest means. The more money can buy, the more affluence (or the lack of it) matters. But also, putting a price on the good things in life can corrupt them. Paying children to read books might get them to read more, but it might also teach them to regard reading as a chore rather than a source of intrinsic satisfaction. Sometimes, market values crowd out nonmarket values worth caring about.

For years, Switzerland had been trying to find a place to store radioactive nuclear waste. Although the country relies heavily on nuclear energy, few communities wanted nuclear waste to reside in their midst. One location designated as a potential nuclear waste site was the small mountain village of Wolfenschiessen, in central Switzerland. In 1993, shortly before a referendum on the issue, some economists surveyed the residents of the village, asking whether they would vote to accept a nuclear waste repository in their community, if the Swiss parliament decided to build it there. Although the facility was widely viewed as an undesirable addition to the neighbourhood, a slim majority (51%) of residents said they would accept it. Apparently their sense of civic duty outweighed their concern about the risks. Then the economists added a sweetener: suppose parliament proposed building the nuclear waste facility in your community and offered to compensate each resident with an annual monetary payment. Then would you favour it?

The result: support went down, not up. Adding the financial inducement cut the rate of acceptance in half, from 51 to 25%. What's more, upping the ante didn't help. When the economists increased the monetary offer, the result was unchanged. The residents stood firm even when offered yearly cash payments as high as £5,300 a person, well in excess of the median monthly income. Similar if less dramatic reactions to monetary offers have been found in other places where communities have resisted radioactive waste repositories. So what was going on in the Swiss village? Why would more people accept nuclear waste for free than for pay?

For many villagers, willingness to accept the nuclear waste site reflected public spirit – a recognition that the country as a whole depended on nuclear energy and that the nuclear waste had to be stored somewhere. If their community was found to be the safest storage site, they were willing to bear the burden. Against the background of this civic commitment, the offer of cash felt like a bribe, an effort to buy their vote. In fact, 83% of those who rejected the monetary proposal explained their opposition by saying they could not be bribed.

You might think that adding a financial incentive simply reinforces whatever public-spirited sentiment already exists, thus increasing support for the nuclear waste site. After all, aren't two incentives – one financial, the other civic – more powerful than one? Not necessarily.

Financial incentives have also been found to crowd out public spirit in settings less fateful than those involving nuclear waste. Each year, on a designated "donation day", Israeli high school students go door-to-door to solicit donations for worthy causes – cancer research, aid to disabled children, and so on. Two economists did an experiment to determine the effect of financial incentives on the students' motivations.

They divided the students into three groups. One group was given a brief motivational speech about the importance of the cause and sent on its way. The second and third groups were given the same speech but also offered a monetary reward based on the amount they collected – 1% and 10%, respectively. The rewards would not be deducted from the charitable donations; they would come from a separate source.

Illustration: Francesco Bongiorni Which group of students do you think raised the most money? If you guessed the unpaid group, you are right. The unpaid students collected 55% more in donations than those who were offered a 1% commission. Those who were offered 10% did considerably better than the 1% group, but less well than the students who were not paid at all. (The unpaid volunteers collected 9% more than those on the high commission.)

What's the moral of the story? The authors of the study conclude that, if you're going to use financial incentives to motivate people, you should either "pay enough or don't pay at all". While it may be true that paying enough will get you what you want, that's not all this story tells us.

Paying students to do a good deed changed the nature of the activity. Going door-to-door collecting funds for charity was now less about performing a civic duty and more about earning a commission. The financial incentive transformed a public-spirited activity into a job for pay. As with the Swiss villagers, so with the Israeli students: the introduction of market norms displaced, or at least dampened, their moral and civic commitment.

A similar lesson emerges from another notable experiment conducted by the same researchers in Israeli day centres. The centres faced a familiar problem: parents sometimes came late to pick up their children. To solve this problem, the centres imposed a fine for late pickups. However, introducing the fine did not reduce the number of late-arriving parents, it increased it. In fact, the incidence of late pickups nearly doubled. Before, parents who came late felt guilty; they were imposing an inconvenience on the teachers. Now parents considered a late pickup as a service for which they were willing to pay. They treated the fine as if it were a fee. Rather than imposing on the teacher, they were simply paying for him or her to work longer.

Not only that: when, after about 12 weeks, the day-care centres eliminated the fine, the new, elevated rate of late arrivals persisted. Once the monetary payment eroded the moral obligation to show up on time, the old sense of responsibility proved difficult to revive. Sometimes, offering payment for a certain behaviour gets you less of it, not more.

• This is an edited extract from What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits Of Markets by Michael Sandel, published by Penguin on 17 May, priced £20. To order a copy for £16, plus UK p&p, go to guardianbookshop.co.uk.
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Latest1234NextAll SurvivalMachine
12 May 2012 12:19AM
just read the first couple of paragraphs and two reactions:

- if you don't like to queue at posh restaurants, you don't have to go to posh restaurants. you can go to other restaurants where you don't need to queue and that are cheaper. In other words you can use your individual freedom and you don;t need to go to snobish places to impress people.

- re boarding queues:
you'll get a sit anyway so what's the problem?
why stand in the queue at the gate when you can have a sit, wait for people to voard the plane, and board it at the end?
people aho are stressed can pay a bit more and board the plane first and choose their sit.
people who don't care can pay less and queue or not queue.
indicvidual freedom. choice. smile.

I am sorry but with such a poor start of your article I can't be bothered reading the rest.

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| Link qevindee
12 May 2012 12:30AM
yep. it's a damning indictment but true, everything is pretty much tagged these days, including us. we're expected to 'sell out' as fast as possible. we do it at school, at the temple, at the mall, pushed forcibly into the somehow unquestioned 'custom' of 'what you get is what you buy', as if it's always been this way. and if you don't or try to resist you're ostracized, singled out as a trouble maker, one to be suspicious of, simply because you're trying to keep your wits about you in the face of what is blindingly apparent to anyone with a handful of uncorrupted brain cells to be the largest and by far the most successful cult the world has ever had the misfortune to bear witness to. but it doesn't have to be that way. and for you it may well not be. i mean, for you there might just be hope. after all, you're reading this and NOT the Daily Mail

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| Link StephenSaunders
12 May 2012 12:33AM
Markets seem to work OK for motor cars and toothbrushes, but they are a complete con for anything to do with the environment. Especially when it comes to 'emissions trading'.

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| Link PRJR
12 May 2012 12:39AM
Unfortunately for you SurvivalMachine Professor Sandel is a brilliant political philosopher of our time and you would do well to catch up with his Justice series on youtube, they are fantastic.

Yes you can say that you don't have to go with Ryanair because they charge you to check in, but the fact is they shouldn't be allowed to in the first place.

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| Link CRexLondon
12 May 2012 12:45AM
But regardless of who cashes in on the excess demand – the touts or the hospital – the fast track system raises a more basic question: should patients be able to jump the queue for medical care simply because they can afford to pay extra?

This system already exists in the UK, even before NHS reforms. Consultants use NHS posts as their cash cows and then hugely top up their salaries with private work.

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| Link CRexLondon
12 May 2012 12:49AM
Response to StephenSaunders, 12 May 2012 12:33AM
I agree.

Emissions trading could even incentivise bad behaviour. For example if one country really does cut its emissions and then trades in credits, other countries effectively buy a licence to pollute. If the country trading in credits does this suddenly, the price of carbon drops and being a licence to pollute becomes cheaper!

Emissions trading would only have a hope of working if the overall cap on the system reduces sufficiently quickly.

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| Link twopennorth
12 May 2012 12:51AM
Money is the currency of self-interest. When you put a price tag on something you define its value in terms of acquisition. The more we define value in monetary terms, the more we lose sight of the empathy, consideration and care-impulse that ultimately make us human.

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| Link peterainbow
12 May 2012 12:56AM
@StephenSaunders

Markets seem to work OK for motor cars ...

really and yet we saw today how many cars are failing their first MOT's and when i look at modern tech as a DIY engineer i am depressed to see the bad designs that are flooding the market, yet they still seem to sell...
maybe because people don't have the knowledge? i don't know, but i do know it isn't working...

even looking at high tech and you see companies like apple applauded even though what they produce fails and is often a poor ripoff of smaller companies tech, so how is this working exactly?

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| Link Bobbydazzler123
12 May 2012 1:01AM
What's the alternative though? For a Politician or Technocrat to decide what is moral? Sounds worse.

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| Link fushandchups
12 May 2012 1:04AM
Response to SurvivalMachine, 12 May 2012 12:19AM
just read the first couple of paragraphs and two reactions:

well, that's your problem right there.

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| Link Bobbydazzler123
12 May 2012 1:09AM
Response to twopennorth, 12 May 2012 12:51AM
There's no consensus about what things such as 'consideration' actually are though.

How does one value a good or service without money? Tell me that?

You need someone to arbitrarily decide. That person or persons then has a lot of power both economic and political. Historically this has not ended well with the planned economy, the 'organised society'; having to use totalitarian techniques to manufacture 'consent' and agreement because these things do not naturally exist.

Trotsky - "Where the sole employer is the State, opposition means deaths by slow starvation."

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| Link makingtime
12 May 2012 1:10AM
I often think the popularity of torrents (downloading music/video for free etc) is at least as much an instinctive rebellion against the commodification of cultural output as it is about anonymous greed.

It is just convention that a song, for instance, is reduced to the form of just another transient fraction of the mass of capital, when it's obvious that songs may have a meaning and value altogether independent of that.

The thinking appears to be built on the shaky notion that our utopian markets invariably deliver aggregate social benefits, and with maximal efficiency, yet we find our utopia is not only imperfect, but also crumbling under its own weight. Perhaps there's a better way for social apes to organise themselves.

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| Link sandgrinder
12 May 2012 1:28AM
Nobody likes to queue.

Actually I don't mind queuing.
As long as it's an efficient queue and when you join you can judge how it's moving.
You can even chat to others in the queue if you're so minded and learn stuff that otherwise you wouldn't have known.
I hate queue jumpers though ... they're scum.
And I don't understand those queues for the automatic check-outs in supermarkets when there's a similar queue that could be joined where you get to speak with a real person when you make the final transaction.

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| Link twopennorth
12 May 2012 1:51AM
Response to Bobbydazzler123, 12 May 2012 1:09AM
There's no consensus about what things such as 'consideration' actually are though.

On the contrary: care, common decency, generosity and empathy are a universal language. Only a sociopath would fail to understand them.

How does one value a good or service without money? Tell me that?

That's the whole point: that human transactions are increasingly being reduced to goods and services.

You need someone to arbitrarily decide...

Empathy and consideration have nothing to do with benchmarks and definitions.

Trotsky - "Where the sole employer is the State, opposition means deaths by slow starvation."

Full marks to Trotsky, but this is totally irrelevant.

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| Link shoogledoogle
12 May 2012 2:05AM
Response to Bobbydazzler123, 12 May 2012 1:09AM
How does one value a good or service without money?

Monetary exchange is an exchange and trade system. It should not be a value system in the philosophical sense - though that is the blurred line identified in the article, and further transgressed here.

Otherwise we would see the 'value' of goods rise and fall with supply and demand issues. In actual fact, what is altered is their demand, supply conditions, exchange value, and not their utility.

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| Link BSspotter
12 May 2012 2:30AM
Hmm, somehow I believe all of this has been covered before and in greater depth in Freakonomics (books, movie and podcasts)

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| Link Corvid
12 May 2012 2:37AM
We are moving towards a world where everything is up for sale...

Heh... just because we Brits would sell our souls for 15 minutes of fame on 'Britain's Got Talent', 'The Jeremy Kyle Show', or some equally dreadful TV programme, doesn't mean everyone else would...

Britain has certainly become the most corrupt country in northwestern Germanic speaking Europe, but the rest of these countries remain mostly free from such third world influences...

Or maybe it was us who taught the third world corruption... after all... most of it was part of the British Empire...

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| Link ammypam
12 May 2012 2:41AM
at Luton Airport, for example, customers can pay £3 to go to the head of the security queue.

What if all customers pay the £3, who goes to the front then?

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| Link alex13
12 May 2012 3:23AM
I have to admit I absolutely detest having to queue, so as much as possible I do my shopping during the week, normally Tuesday. Sometimes it is unavoidable and I have to put up with it. But as to the option of paying to jump the queue no thanks. I am not giving a company money because they can not be bothered to run their tills etc properly.

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| Link JimTanz
12 May 2012 4:16AM
Response to Bobbydazzler123, 12 May 2012 1:09AM
"How does one value a good or service without money? Tell me that? You need someone to arbitrarily decide. "

When I read a book with my grand daughter, no one has to tell me the value of the time I am spending with her, or the value of the 'transaction' to her.
When I give my neighbour some sugar, neither of us calculate the monetary value of the exchange.
When I explain concepts to my students, I dont relate the time I spend with them to my monthly salary, and they dont have to give me more to get additional explanations

Each of us has our own sense of value, and we can apply it every day. Enjoy.

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| Link GreatGrandDad
12 May 2012 4:29AM
Time to re-read Our Obsolete Market Mentality (Polanyi 1947)?

I am fortunate to live in rural SE Asia, where Reciprocity (sharing of labour within and between extended families) and Redistribution (sharing of 'windfalls', such as lottery successes and inheritances) still have their place alongside The Market.

Economics is far, far greater than just The Market, as Adam Smith (who was a Professor of Moral Philosophy) shows in The Theory of Moral Sentiments and its sequel An Enquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.

Unfortunately we are given the impression that it is all and only The Market by endless quotation of only part of one page of ....Wealth of Nations where Smith points out that It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest....

Economics needs to be put back in its place as a part of Moral Philosophy-------------but, unfortunately, this is the era of rampant specialisation in the industrialised countries, which have over-developed themselves into an economic cul-de-sac.

The industrialised countries ill have to learn from countries that kept a big agrarian, basically self-sufficient, sector of extended families as industrialism/capitalism/consumerism wane with the drying up of mined resources.

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| Link Billlogan
12 May 2012 4:59AM
When I was in the RN in the mid-to-late 70's I used to travel a lot on BR trains, Despite the MOD paying top dollar for my travel warrant tickets, I was consigned to often overcrowded carriages, while first-class ones were almost empty.

As far as I'm concerned, money has always talked and always will and It's called human nature. I visited the Holocaust Museum in St. Petersburg in Florida today and read stories from those who fled from Germany just before war broke out to America. Am I wrong in assuming that these people only escaped because they could afford it? However, their stories were both harrowing and inspirational, as many of them had long and successful lives in the US, despite losing everything, including many of their families in the concentration camps.

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| Link TheBonsaiKid
12 May 2012 6:06AM
Good luck Mr Sandel. The great victory of the market system is its stranglehold on thought. Nowadays putting forward an idea based on some value system other than money (dignity, kindness, some basic idea of moral rights, etc), in the management of some field or another (education, health, immigration/minimum wage) where money increasingly dictates what goes, will actually get you laughed at or given some pitying look for being hopelessly naive.

And that is little short of a tragedy.

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| Link songsforthedeaf
12 May 2012 6:20AM
There should be more on The Guardian about the folly of money...its an important topic, I dont see it discussed that much

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| Link Giorock
12 May 2012 7:20AM
Not that I'm religious, but it is often said that in the eyes of GOD we are all equal. If true, there is some consolation that at least there is no line jumping to enter those ' gates'........! That said, it seems radical islamists have a different notion: blow yourself up (and as many others as possible along the way) and your spirit gets fast tracked to heaven with lots of gold stars and whatever number of virgins awaiting you. It seems that Religion is not immune either and is not just confined to to markets.

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| Link Wilsonclan
12 May 2012 7:35AM
Response to ammypam, 12 May 2012 2:41AM
What if all customers pay the £3, who goes to the front then?

Me, as I'll be in the standard lane having decided it wasn't worth it!

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| Link jakartamoscow
12 May 2012 7:42AM
SurvivalMachine there just showed us how fun it is to play with money - which is, lets face it, what we'd all be doing had we all the excesses to afford silly things. (Two weeks ago just lowered the cost for a broken-arm operation from $5000 to 1800 by contacting the right people, but hey, isn't that similar in spirit to cutting queues?)

This is all part of human nature, and changing our habits will take more than politics or religion. Or perhaps, the solution is transparency. When you know someone had paid to queue, you'd make a sounder judgement about the service/product provider and the customer who paid extra... oh, the kind of decisions one makes when enough information is available - you'd never guess how far they'd go

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| Link LucianOfSamosata
12 May 2012 7:42AM
This is as old as Martin Luther hammering on about the sale of Papal Indulgences.

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| Link cghorn
12 May 2012 7:47AM
Bribery has been a part of human life since we came out of the trees.Probably even before
So why pay somebody to point out the blatantly obvious
I'm prepared to write a piece on the probability that the sun will rise tomorrow if the price is right,any takers?

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| Link capelover
12 May 2012 8:01AM
Response to cghorn, 12 May 2012 7:47AM
Die you read this?

I think not.
An excellant article - given me something to think about today.

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| Link katiewm
12 May 2012 8:01AM
It seems that a number of commenters didn't read far enough to get to the main point of the article, which is that some things are not valued in money, and trying to value them in money actually makes them less desirable, not more so. Trying to create extrinsic material value out of moral value really doesn't work so well.

My favourite example of this is the ultimatum game, a game theory example that's been used over and over in behavioural economics. Give one person an amount of money, tell them to split it however they like with someone else, but they only get their share if the other person accepts the deal. If the split is perceived to be unfair, the other person is going to reject it, even though they'd objectively have more money than before. Fairness, in other words, means more than money - just like a lot of other things, as outlined in the article, like civic duty or charitable impulse or waiting your turn.

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| Link cynosarge
12 May 2012 8:02AM
I am amazed that neither Michael Sandel nor most of the posters below the line apply a little thought to the problem of queuing. When leaving the house, take an ebook reader with you. When queuing, read! Opportunity cost of time in queue reduced dramatically. If someone pushes in front of you in the queue, don't get mad - just push the button to advance to the next page in your book. You've all shown the willingness to read, since you're reading The Guardian. Just plan your reading more intelligently.

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| Link JonathonFields
12 May 2012 8:03AM
The most interesting part of this article, is the fact that people are naturally inclined to give, and enjoy the opportunity to give. The commercial classes, those most focused on money, and how to make it, seem to assume that everything, and everybody, can be bought. The right wing culture of greed and selfishness, is in direct antithesis of human nature. No wonder then, that the right wing propaganda machine has to work overtime to convince us that life is all about making it, looking after number one, and not caring a dam about anybody else.

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| Link katiewm
12 May 2012 8:04AM
Response to cghorn, 12 May 2012 7:47AM
Not hardly. Widespread bribery is usually a sign of administrative or market inefficiency. In a system where things work to everyone's satisfaction, there is no need to bribe. (Then, of course, bribery requires money, which humans have not had "since we came out of the trees.") Maybe you should read the article, you might learn something.

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| Link capelover
12 May 2012 8:06AM
excellent

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| Link theEclectic
12 May 2012 8:07AM
Queuing (at airports, Wimbledon, sales, etc.,) is a ritual in the UK. Some might argue that a little pain i.e., queuing, makes the service or goods they buy more valuable or enjoyable afterwards (Like my janitor who always take a 15 minute walk in the cold outdoor before taking his evening tea).

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| Link 2try2give
12 May 2012 8:07AM
To know about morals in the market, we have to know what we mean by morals and markets? Certainly not the meaning some politicians and some rating agencies give, as if it were something unique. Morals can change with time. The markets of a thousand years ago have nothing to do, anymore, with the actual markets, where printed money is the most important tool. Before only farming and hunting brought the majority of the goods. Today with printed money you can buy everything, even morally despicable services. One principle, which should be solved primarily, it is the value of our work. When someone can earn a 100.000 times the amount of an ordinary citizen, than we can say that the salary or the citizen is that of a slave, because he earns nothing compared to some rich people. Wikipedia : Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work . Today : Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be rent, and forced to work. We have here the definition of the “Ethical slave”. Can this be applied to the majority of the people? To solve this problem is beyond the scope of this article and our arguments, but should be one of the moral priorities of the markets and society.

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| Link Richmondecology
12 May 2012 8:10AM
Response to SurvivalMachine, 12 May 2012 12:19AM
Quite right a poor start and much of the same !

as you have not truly covered anything different but an excuse like so much in Today's media, a repeating again , so someone can hype it & someone can make a quick buck!
if your book had real intention substance it would start as a donation to the thought process !

& not more drivel!

we have choice but sadly many many , do not exercise his choice ! take the cheap option for starters !

Was in a Eatery in Kingston yesterday- where the name is synonymous with a TV chef- and if one was just partial critical- it revealed how sheepish pathetic and ridiculousness, the public Can be !

- my first and last experiences of what was a scam/ overpriced and badly prepared approach to serving food- but the public thought otherwise as it was FULL !

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| Link capelover
12 May 2012 8:15AM
Response to JonathonFields, 12 May 2012 8:03AM
The right wing culture of greed and selfishness, is in direct antithesis of human nature

I fear you are wrong here. People are capable of being greedy and selfish just as much as caring and considerate. But it would be nice to live in a society which actively promotes our altruistic rather than our egoistic side.

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| Link omgwhatsmypassword
12 May 2012 8:15AM
I agree with the points in the article, particularly regarding queue jumping for sale. Queueing is a quintessential aspect of British society and an expression of fairness, which has always distinquished us from our Continental cousins e.g. the Germans. As our society is falling apart anyway, legalised queue jumping should not be allowed by law, particularly at airports. As for theme parks, we should boycott those which practise this abominable practice.

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| Link capelover
12 May 2012 8:20AM
Response to Richmondecology, 12 May 2012 8:10AM
Your comment is even more incomprehensible than Survivalmachine's

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| Link Bobbydazzler123
12 May 2012 8:21AM
Response to shoogledoogle, 12 May 2012 2:05AM
Monetary exchange is an exchange and trade system. It should not be a value system in the philosophical sense - though that is the blurred line identified in the article, and further transgressed here.

Otherwise we would see the 'value' of goods rise and fall with supply and demand issues. In actual fact, what is altered is their demand, supply conditions, exchange value, and not their utility.

I probably should have qualified what I meant as 'economic value' or 'exchange value'.

For example if I work a 10 hour day. Who or what should tell me how much that is 'worth' from the POV of exchange? The Market? A Politician? A left wing moralist?

The market isn't prefect but it is fairer than alternatives.

Your utility argument is somewhat bunk though since it presupposes something has an 'objective use value' but that fact is that use value can change with circumstances and also peoples subjective states. The idea that one could have a 'science of value' is complete tosh.

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| Link REDLAN1
12 May 2012 8:27AM
Response to JonathonFields, 12 May 2012 8:03AM
The most interesting part of this article, is the fact that people are naturally inclined to give, and enjoy the opportunity to give.

Absolutely - the earliest economic system thought to have existed is gift giving - that is I make a hand axe, I see you need a hand axe, I give you the hand axe, I expect nothing in return.

It is a system based on trust, and it polices itself. Selfish individuals will find themselves ostracised by the group - others in the group will stop gift giving to them. And gift giving as Jonathon points out is still very much alive and well. In the same way chimps groom each other to cement social bonds, we gift give.

So let me we see...

Those individuals who would have been ostracised in our early societies, have gained power and created a niche in which they can thrive. The greed, selfishness and corruption, it's supposed to be there.

We have a system (capitalist free market) which is the antithesis of a fundamental social structure shared by all (most?) humans, and we wonder why it has suboptimal results.

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| Link mistamusa
12 May 2012 8:28AM
Everything is up for grabs as this feeding frenzy continues unabated.
The commodification of everything in our culture is aided and abetted by the media.
Nothing is sacred anymore as this horrendous monoculture takes shape. Existing cultures are trampled underfoot.

So Buddhism, for example, becomes a lifestyle accessory for a certain type of 30 -40yr old. It is used to sell perfumes, holidays and the cheap promise of feeling good

Submitted by Lee M on Sat, 05/12/2012 - 11:33am

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