Michael Sandel: "What Money Can't Buy"
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2012-11-29/michael-sandel-what-money-cant-buy
Harvard professor Michael Sandel on whether there's something wrong with a world in which everything is for sale.
Guests
Michael Sandel
professor of government, Harvard University.
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Excerpt from "What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets" by Michael Sandel. Copyright 2012 by Michael Sandel. Reprinted here by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux. All rights reserved.
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Market forces usually do not protect the innocent or helpless. If organs / sex cells can be sold for high sums, there will be many killed or violated to retrieve these (esp. in less developed and poor nations). I don't know if this issue was raised. This already happens (people found dead with kidneys missing).
GG
Earning by Learning of Dallas (EBL of Dallas) is the incentive based reading program mentioned by the author. The Earning by Learning program use performance-based and intrinsic / extrinsic incentives to stimulate children to read. Each student must pass (with at least 80% accuracy) a computerized comprehension book quiz for accountability.
Earning by Learning of Dallas is the single most effective and cost efficient literacy program in America, as documented by a recent Harvard study on how incentives can greatly increase the pace of children's learning. Here is a link to the study Harvard Study
Thanks to EBL's phenomenal coordinators over 89,780 students have read / passed 940,845 books /quizzes.
Earning by Learning of Dallas
www.eblofdallas.org
Ray Kurzweil, a DR Show guest earlier this week, foresees a fusion of man and machine over the next several decades. Of course it's been happening to an ever increasing extent with the advent of pacemakers, artificial hearts, prosthetic limbs, etc. But the recent development of cochlear implants portends a blending of our brains with computers, whether that means actual implantation or some sort of attachment to the surface of the body. How much longer will it be before a poor or middle class student, who can't even afford tuition, begins classes at Harvard or University of Michigan and has to compete with the children of multimillionaires who have have been fitted with the latest, state of the art, computer-brain-augmentation?
Despite all the debate from the pundits, we basically just had an election on this very issue. To reinforce my opinion, look at all the comments here about "socialism" and "eliteism". These are the same people who wanted a republican ideal of a United States guided only by market demands, which by its very nature dictates that the ultra rich would and should hold all power and privelege. The majority of Americans are uncomfortable with this idea, and still hold on to American and human ideals.
The frightening part of this discussion is how many people see no issue here at all. Ironically, these are largely the same group that claim moral superiority. Again, look at the election demographics for the two sides of this same issue.
My mother sent $5 to my daughter for each college A. It was a nominal payment that taught that grandmother valued learning and that grandaughter could be proud of working to accomplish. The daughter attended Iowa, not very expensive Harvard. I wonder what the guest might have said to the observation that Harvard Professors have, in effect, sold themselves to those wealthy enough to endow or pay the tuition for Harvard students.
Hey Partisan Politics - You sound like my father in the 1960s. The world is ALWAYS going to hell in a handbasket, and the previous generation and previous 100 years are ALWAYS better than present people and times.
You should listen to Jon Stewart riffing on "traditional America" and the real meaning of the American experiment:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2012/11/16/jon_stewart_rips_bill_...
Isn't the most basic component classism? Someone in need of money is more likely to be bought. Mr. Sandel suggests interesting debates- that should be discussed. But the discussion cannot be complete if we don't consider the moral scale of the very poor or for those in need? Also, there have been times that I've made decisions based on financial need. Was I more likely to make a choice that I found morally objectionable because at that time I needed money? quite possibly yes. So how do we weigh varying factors, mitigating circumstances? Even in the case of paying children to read or do homework. Is a "rich" child less likely to be "bought" than a "poor" child?
The most recent election should prove that money has diminishing effects on people. Karl Rove's two big superpacs spent tons and were not all that successful and reportedly became less effective as they piled on more and more. Money seemed to matter more early in the cycle and lessened over time.
Moreover, it appears that "conservative" white adult men were more affected by abundant piles of cash than other groups. Minorities appeared to be least affected by big money buys.
And knowing HOW to throw around the green stuff works best of all.e.g. revealing Romney's disdain for large segments if the electorate was pretty darned damaging compared even to lying about Jeeps inChina.
Finally, it is truly amazing how often those who have never run a business banter on about capitalism and smear everyone else as socialists, communists, nazis, et al. The best we can say about their ilk is that they are abject generalists.......a lot of hooey over a lot of things.
Dear Diane, Michael,
This is one of the most coherent and rational discussions I've ever heard. Wonderful!
This is one of the things that disgusts me about America at this moment, so I relate strongly.
Our values are clearly under attack by those that would profit.
When its traced back to its roots, isn't this 3 decade trend ultimately perpetrated by the 1%.
Best,
Steve
Did the ethics (or lack thereof) of fracking never come up on this conversation!? If my neighbor sells his land for fracking, as I decline, and our water in the whole region is contaminated is that a fair financial transaction? I think not. It should, and I hope soon will be criminal. Fracking seems to be the most egregious example of how the free market economy has run amok and is damaging lives of the least fortunate in this country. The people with no voice, no financial power and ultimately no rights to protect themselves from big oils lies. Short term thinking for quick financial gain is a cancer on this country, a pox on the healthy land and water that makes America a safe and beautiful place to live. Hopefully new Obama regulations will send the "gold rush" frackers into a swift retreat.
partisan politics on November 29, 2012 @ 9:05 am wrote: "it is a lot easier on the ego to claim yourself the victim than it is to tell yourself and everyone else that life is to hard and I'm just not up to it"
Looking in the mirror again, are we? That's exactly what you, and the rest of the Republi-Cons, are busy doing: blaming everyone else for their defeat!
(Nice job, evading and avoiding what I wrote.)
partisan politics on November 29, 2012 @ 9:47 am wrote: “I read off site book reviews and other commentary. You ignore the fact that there is an on going effort to call socialism by anything other than socialism. People that believe in it know the Soviet Union and Marxist connection and do everything they can to distance their beliefs and desires from it. You are of this ilk.”
1) In other words, you merely parrot the opinion of others. Of course, since you’ve provided no links to those reviews and commentaries, you provide no way for us to judge their accuracy. (Which, I suspect, is as non-existent as yours.)
2) I am aware that there is an ongoing conservative effort to mislabel as “Socialism!” anything that deviates from their views. It’s as bad as those on the “left” who throw the term “Fascist!” around as a catch-all epithet. In the process all you (and they) do is prove none of you know what you’re talking about! “You are of this ilk.”
3) I studied Marxism in college (the better to know my enemy), and am aware that there are vast differences between it and Socialism. (In fact, Marx had nothing but contempt for it, believing Socialists didn’t go far enough.) But thanks for demonstrating (specifically) that you don’t know what you’re talking about, and for showing that when conservatives shout “Socialism!”, what they really mean is “Communism”.
TO BE CONTINUED
PART TWO
4) Sorry, but deviation from pure Laissez-Faire Capitalism is not Socialism or Communism. The truth is the U.S. has never followed that form of Capitalism. Most of our modern industries got started with massive help from government. (Study the history of the railroads, for example.) And government has always acted to alleviate some of the failures of the marketplace. The alternative to Laissez-Faire isn’t Socialism or Marxism. It’s the regulated form of Capitalism that has mostly operated in this nation. (And hey, in the first debate even Romney agreed that regulation was necessary for the marketplace to work! Does that mean the Republican Party nominated a “Socialist!/Communist!”?)
5) You have absolutely no idea what I believe in, because you ignore or misinterpret what I write every time I post my views. Re-read paragraph number 4, and you’ll start to get an idea. I oppose both Socialism and Communism, but that doesn’t mean I have to blindly, mindlessly, oppose every idea a socialist or even a communist supports. Churchill and Roosevelt allied with Stalin in fighting Hitler, did that make them communists? Of course not. Neither does the fact that I don’t blindly worship the “pure, perfect, sacred, and holy” marketplace make me a communist. I can agree that Capitalism has flaws without adopting Marx’s prescription. That was truly a case of the “cure” being worse than the disease!
Maybe, someday, you’ll abandon your Manichean way of thinking, in which everything is black or white, and anyone who doesn’t agree with you is a “Socialist!”. You may even decide to stop following, and mindlessly parroting, empty political slogans and rhetoric. It’s even possible you may one day employ fact and reason. Then we will have much to discuss indeed, and you can finally begin to understand what I actually do believe in.
Jeff Nowicki on November 29, 2012 @ 12:22 pm wrote: “. . . a republican ideal of a United States guided only by market demands, . . . .’
It may just be a typo, but you appear to have fallen for one tactic of the right-wing: equation of Laissez-Faire Capitalism with “a republican ideal”, when it’s really a Republican Party “ideal”. (And that only relatively recently.)
The capital is important. True “republicanism” simply stands for representative democracy (as distinct from direct democracy), and in opposition to monarchy, aristocracy, and even oligarchy. Today’s Republican Party (which I prefer to call the Republi-Con Party, to distinguish it from the past) embraces an economic view that borders on oligarchy. But true republicanism has little or nothing to do with economics, and everything to do with politics (in the philosophical, not partisan, use of that term).
Read The Federalist Papers to get a clearer understanding.