What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets

Michael Sandel is a political philosopher with an interest in democracy, ethics, justice, and markets. Sandel received his PhD as a Rhodes scholar at Oxford and now works as Professor of Government at Harvard University. His widely lauded course, Justice, offered through Harvard, has been made available as a free online course; it has been viewed by tens of millions of people. The popularity of this course, and of Sandel’s subsequent addresses, has led to Sandel gaining a reputation as a public intellectual.  

Sandel is particularly interested in economic and societal privilege (which he critiques), and in the increasingly commercialized nature of society. Sandel feels that the infiltration of free-market values into nonmarket spaces threatens to corrupt many institutions and values. As well as his courses, Sandel has a BBC Radio 4 series, The Public Philosopher, has given talks at the London School of Economics, and has spoken to public audiences internationally.

Greg Mankiw is an economic theorist who supports the ubiquitous appearance of free-market values in society. Mankiw believes in an inherent righteousness imposed by free-market practices, such as ticket scalping, in that markets ensure that resources reach those who value them the most through a principle of supply and demand.