Tyler Cowen notes that Sandel's book makes it to several "best of the year" lists. I haven't read the entire book, but I find it, like much of Sandel's work, very frustrating. The reviews of the book here are interesting but to my mind don't get to the heart of the matter, except for this one by Herbert Gintis: By focusing on the marketability of particular things, Sandel misses the larger effect of an economy regulated by markets on the evolution of social morality. Movements for religious and lifestyle tolerance, gender equality, and democracy have flourished and triumphed in societies governed…
Free Market Economy v. Free Market Society
Should there be markets in everything? In the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s ruling on Obamacare, the sharpest analysts pointed out that Chief Justice John Roberts’ interpretation of the individual mandate as a tax (rather than a fine or penalty) undercut the fiscal logic of this approach to healthcare reform. Defenders of Obamacare had been appealing to “behavioral economics,” arguing that because Americans are a law-abiding people, we would comply with the individual mandate not because the penalty was so high that it made economic sense to purchase a plan, but because our sense of citizenship makes us averse to violating…
