Summary of Michael J. Sandel's What Money Can't Buy

Everest Media

Description

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 The airlines have begun selling line-cutting privileges as an à la carte perk. For $39, United Airlines will sell you priority boarding for your flight from Denver to Boston, along with the right to cut in line at the security checkpoint.
#2 The Empire State Building offers a fast track to the top for $45 per person. The Express Pass allows you to skip the lines and go straight to the best views.
#3 The fast-track trend can also be seen on freeways across the United States. Commuters can buy their way out of bumper-to-bumper traffic and into a fast-moving express lane.
#4 The line-standing business is becoming more common in America. It involves hiring someone to stand in line for you, and then charging your clients as much as $125 per ticket for the free performances.

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Éthique et morale
• Ethique et morale

Informations

• Publié par: Everest Media LLC
• Date de parution: 09 mars 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781669352655
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Insights on Michael J. Sande's What Money Can't Buy
Contents Insights from Chapter 1 Insights from Chapter 2 Insights from Chapter 3 Insights from Chapter 4 Insights from Chapter 5
Insights from Chapter 1

#1

The airlines have begun selling line-cutting privileges as an à la carte perk. For $39, United Airlines will sell you priority boarding for your flight from Denver to Boston, along with the right to cut in line at the security checkpoint.

#2

The Empire State Building offers a fast track to the top for $45 per person. The Express Pass allows you to skip the lines and go straight to the best views.

#3

The fast-track trend can also be seen on freeways across the United States. Commuters can buy their way out of bumper-to-bumper traffic and into a fast-moving express lane.

#4

The line-standing business is becoming more common in America. It involves hiring someone to stand in line for you, and then charging your clients as much as $125 per ticket for the free performances.

#5

The business of line standing has expanded from Congress to the U. S. Supreme Court. When the Court hears oral arguments in big constitutional cases, it’s not easy to get in. But if you’re willing to pay, you can hire a line stander to get you a ringside seat.

#6

Queuing for pay is not only an American phenomenon. In China, 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 travel to the major public hospitals in the capital, creating long lines.

#7

Concierge medicine is a growing trend among doctors, who offer more attentive care at a higher price. It involves cutting the number of patients you see per day in order to provide more attention to each one.

#8

Concierge medicine is similar to the special ticket windows and appointment scalping in Beijing. It allows the affluent to jump the queue for medical care.

#9

The shift in airport and amusement park queues to market norms is just a glimpse of the growing reach of money and markets into spheres of life once governed by nonmarket norms.

#10

The argument that free markets are better than queues at getting tickets to those who value them the most is not completely convincing. The willingness to stand in line may be a better indicator of who wants to attend than the willingness to pay.

#11

The utilitarian case for markets over queues is highly contingent. Sometimes markets do get goods to those who value them most highly, while other times, queues may do so. Whether, in any given case, markets or queues do this job better is an empirical question, not a matter that can be resolved in advance by abstract economic reasoning.

#12

The utilitarian argument for markets over queues is also open to a further, more fundamental objection: certain goods have value in ways that go beyond the utility they provide individual buyers and sellers. When a good is allocated, it loses part of what makes it the good it is.

#13

The term corruption refers to more than bribes and illicit payments. It refers to the degradation of a good or a social practice, which is when it is treated according to a lower mode of valuation than is appropriate to it.

#14

Some instances of paid queue jumping, line standing, and ticket scalping are objectionable, while others are not. The reason is that market values are corrosive of certain goods but appropriate to others.

#15

The outrage over scalpers selling campsites at Yosemite National Park demonstrates the strong opposition to the idea that anything should be for sale.

#16

The selling of tickets to papal masses is a perfect example of how market values and sacred goods collide.