According to Sandel, it is the financial crisis experienced in 2008 as well as the preceding years which made the market economy become a market society. It created a difficult time calling for faith in the markets as well as deregulation otherwise referred to as a time for market success.
Prolific people like Reagan and Thatcher fueled their belief in the markets but not the government administration to propagate success as well as freedom. Through the 1990s, Clinton as well as Blair continued moderating this view as well as consolidating the belief that those markets could indeed be the basic way through which public good could be attained.
The list of sellable services and items shown at the start of the essay serves a very important purpose. They try to show us how the markets have changed over the years. The list shows that nearly everything unimaginable is now equal for sale in the market economy. This shows the kind of change that has occurred within the market society.
Sandel attempts to make a very important point when he mentions the move to even now sell slaves and children. This view is aimed at espousing to what extent amorality is attached within the current market liberalization. It shows that anything is for sale as long as it is aimed at profit maximization.
Sandel poses the question as to why we have to worry that everything is up for sale and offers two answers. The reasons he offers are inequality and corruption. Concerning inequality, he says that living in a place where everything is up for sale is difficult for the people who lack money.
The more cash one has to buy something, the more the richness or absence of it becomes important. According to him, if the sole advantage of richness was the capacity to purchase fancy and expensive things, the inequalities existing in income as well as wealth would not be as important as they seem to be currently. However, with the ability to purchase more and more through cash, the nature of distribution of income and richness changes.
Secondly, as for corruption, there seems to be an overarching corrosive tendency caused by the markets. Sandel says that pricing all the good things in the world can lead to a corruption of the same. This is owed to the fact that markets do not just allocate goods but rather express and endorse several attitudes to the goods that are being traded. Posing the question and the answer at the middle of the article is better since it helps reflect upon the earlier information provided to us that leads to the question.
There has to be a place where I can draw the line between sellable items and morals. Items for sale should not hurt that moral fiber. Some of the items listed for sale in this article actually cross the moral limit, because they tend to go against the moral liberties as well as principles of life of human beings. Business should be run without infringing on the rights and freedoms of other people.
I concur with Sandel that the practice of encouraging citizens to leave their spiritual and moral conviction behind when they are at a public place be abandoned. When individuals do that, they allow the sale of items that cannot be considered morally correct. Spiritual and moral conviction is thus important in guiding people on the good and bad things to do when selling certain items.
There are some social implications of making institutions like prisons, schools, as well as hospitals for profit rather than for public. People will stop working freely but on the basis of highest bidder, better service. Services will deteriorate. In schools, learning will go down as those who can afford get the best while those without any money suffer. People coming out of prisons will not be changed since too much business could corrode prison officials to thinking about profits rather than rehabilitation of inmates.