Skip to main content
Log in

Commodification and Human Interests

  • Original Research
  • Published:
Journal of Bioethical Inquiry Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

In Markets Without Limits and a series of related papers, Jason Brennan and Peter Jaworski argue that it is morally permissible to buy and sell anything that it is morally permissible to possess and exchange outside of the market. Accordingly, we should (Brennan and Jaworski argue) open markets in “contested commodities” including blood, gametes, surrogacy services, and transplantable organs. This paper clarifies some important aspects of the case for market boundaries and in so doing shows why there are in fact moral limits to the market. I argue that the case for restricting the scope of the market does not (as Brennan and Jaworski assume) turn on the idea that some things are constitutively non-market goods; it turns instead on the idea that treating some things according to market norms would threaten the realization of particular kinds of human interests.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. Markets Without Limits uses the term “anti-commodification theorists” to refer to both market abolitionists and moral boundary theorists.

  2. Brennan and Jaworski acknowledge that in listing such a wide range of possibilities, they have adopted a broad definition of what a market is. They also claim that the authors they criticize also adopt a broad definition of markets but do not provide any textual justification for this claim (Brennan and Jaworski 2016, 54).

  3. This minimal case for market boundaries leaves many important issues open. Two important questions— which unfortunately fall outside the scope of this paper—are which (if any) justifications for market boundaries depend on perfectionist judgements about the relative value of different conceptions of human flourishing and, if so, whether this commitment to perfectionism is morally problematic. For a defence of the view that the case for market boundaries is compatible with the liberal principle of state neutrality, see Keat (2000).

References

  • Anderson, E. 1990. The ethical limitations of the market. Economics and Philosophy 6(2): 179–205.

  • ———. 1995. Value in ethics and economics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

  • Archard, D. 2002. Selling yourself: Titmuss’s argument against a market in blood. The Journal of Ethics 6(1): 87–103.

  • Block, W. 1999. Market-inalienability once again: Reply to Radin. Thomas Jefferson Law Review 22: 37–88.

  • Brennan, J., and P. Jaworski. 2015a. In defense of commodification. Moral Philosophy and Politics 2(2): 357–377.

  • ———. 2015b. Markets without symbolic limits. Ethics 125(4): 1053–1077.

  • ———. 2016. Markets without limits: Moral virtues and commercial interests. New York, NY: Routledge.

  • ———. 2017. If you can reply for money, you can reply for free. The Journal of Value Inquiry 51(4): 655–661.

  • Capron, A. 2014. Six decades of organ donation and the challenges that shifting the United States to a market system would create around the world. Law and Contemporary Problems 77(3): 25–69.

  • Haidt, J., and S. Murphy. 2000. Moral dumbfounding: When intuition finds no reason. Unpublished manuscript.

  • Holland, S. 2001. Contested commodities at both ends of life: Buying and selling gametes, embryos, and body tissues. Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 11(3): 263–284.

  • Jaworski, P., and J. Brennan. 2015. Market architecture: It’s the how, not the what. Georgetown Journal of Law & Public Policy 13: 231.

  • Kass, L. 1992. Organs for sale? Propriety, property, and the price of progress. The Public interest 107: 65–86.

  • Keat, R. 2000. Market boundaries and human goods. Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements 45: 23–36.

  • Kerstein, S.J. 2009. Kantian condemnation of commerce in organs. Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 19(2): 147–169.

  • Koplin, J.J. 2014. Assessing the likely harms to kidney vendors in regulated organ markets. The American Journal of Bioethics 14(10): 7–18.

  • Koplin, J.J., and M.J. Selgelid. 2015. Burden of proof in bioethics. Bioethics 29(9): 597–603.

  • Malmqvist E. (2013) Kidney sales and the analogy with dangerous employment. Health Care Analysis 23(2): 1–15.

  • Martin, D., and S. White. 2014. Risk, regulation, and financial incentives for living kidney donation. The American Journal of Bioethics 14(10): 46–48.

  • Phillips, A. 2013. Our bodies, whose property? Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

  • Radin, M.J. 1986. Market-inalienability. Harvard Law Review 100: 1849–1937.

  • ———. 1996. Contested commodities. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

  • Rippon, S. 2014. Imposing options on people in poverty: The harm of a live donor organ market. Journal of Medical Ethics 40(3): 145–150.

  • Roth, A.E. 2007. Repugnance as a constraint on markets. Journal of Economic Perspectives 21(3): 37–58.

  • Royzman, E.B., K. Kim, and R.F. Leeman. 2015. The curious tale of Julie and Mark: Unraveling the moral dumbfounding effect. Judgment and Decision Making; Tallahassee 10(4): 296–313.

  • Sandel, M. 2000. What money can’t buy: The moral limits of markets. Tanner Lectures on Human Values 21: 87–122.

  • ———. 2012. What money can’t buy: The moral limits of markets. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

  • Satz, D. 2010. Why some things should not be for sale: The moral limits of markets. Oxford University Press.

  • Semrau, L. 2017. Reassessing the likely harms to kidney sellers in regulated organ markets. The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 42(6): 634–652

  • Tetlock, P.E. 2000. Coping with trade-offs: Psychological constraints and political implications. In Elements of reason: Cognition, choice, and the bounds of rationality, edited by A. Lupia, M.D. McCubbins, and S.L. Popkin, 239–263. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  • Titmuss, R.M. 1997. The gift relationship: From human blood to social policy. New York, NY: New Press.

  • Van Zyl, L. and R. Walker R. 2013. Beyond altruistic and commercial contract motherhood: The professional model. Bioethics 27(7): 373–381.

  • Walsh, A. 2013. Commodification. In International Encyclopedia of Ethics, Blackwell Publishing Ltd. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9781444367072.wbiee712/abstract.

  • Walzer, M. 1983. Spheres of justice: A defense of pluralism and equality. New York, NY: Basic Books.

Download references

Funding

This research was supported by funding from the Victorian Government’s Operational Infrastructure Support Program.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Julian J. Koplin.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Koplin, J.J. Commodification and Human Interests. Bioethical Inquiry 15, 429–440 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11673-018-9857-6

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11673-018-9857-6

Keywords

Navigation