OPINION - Should EVERYTHING be for Sale?

"'What Money Can't Buy' and What it Shouldn't Buy" PBS Newshour 6/11/2012

Excerpt

SUMMARY: While most of our everyday transactions are driven by the marketplace, are there some things money shouldn't be able to buy -- a spot in line, maybe a human life? As part of his Making Sen$e of financial news series, Paul Solman speaks with Harvard professor Michael Sandel about his new book, "What Money Can't Buy."

JUDY WOODRUFF (Newshour): Now, is it wrong to pay to get to the head of the line?

NewsHour economics correspondent Paul Solman explores that question and some related ones in a conversation with the author of a new book.

It's part of Paul's regular reporting Making Sense of financial news.

WOMAN: Do I think I should be able to bid for a baby? I'm not -- sure.

(LAUGHTER)

WOMAN: It's a market.

PAUL SOLMAN (Newshour): Michael Sandel has been called one of the most prominent college professors in America for his course "Justice," now online after having been taken by some 25 percent of all Harvard undergrads over the past two decades.

Sandel orchestrates a discussion among the course's 1,000 students, mixing case studies with moral stalwarts from Aristotle to John Rawls.

Early in the term, Sandel asks students if everything should be for sale, mediated by the marketplace, that is, like the value of a human life, which, posited at $200,000 in one case study, student Julia Roto thought far too low.