Jason Brennan and Peter M. Jaworski's Markets without limits: moral virtues and commercial interests. New York: Routledge, 2016, 239 pp.

Abstract

Review of Jason Brennan and Peter M. Jaworski's Markets without limits: moral virtues and commercial interests. New York: Routledge, 2016, 239 pp.Recently, ethical analysis of markets has taken a new direction. The current focus can be called the 'commodification debate'. This commodification debate concerns what should or should not be bought and sold. These arguments have direct implications for the scope of markets: something cannot morally be for sale, then a market for that item is impermissible. 'Anti-commodification theorists' such as Elizabeth Anderson and Michael Sandel argue that there are particular things that ought not be commodified. For example, Elizabeth Anderson argues that commercial surrogacy is an illegitimate form of exchange (Anderson 1990, 71). Michael Sandel's (2013) book, What money can't buy: the moral limits of markets, provides further examples.Jason Brennan and Peter Jaworski's recent book, Markets without limits: moral virtues and commercial interests insightfully and systematically critiques anti-commodification theories. The authors argue that whatever may be done for free can be permissibly commodified. One of the book's many virtues involves subjecting this intuition to rigorous analytical critique. Its contribution to the current literatures is so significant that one should not enter into the debate without addressing it.The authors' central claim is if you can do it for free, you can do it for If you can ethically donate an organ for free, you can ethically sell it for money, you may provide sex for free, you may provide sex for money, and so on; conversely, anything that is immoral for free, such as murder, would also be immoral for money. The objections that most people have to markets are rarely regarding the actual exchange of money, but the circumstances in which the transaction is made; objections to selling dogs for dog fighting are not actually about exchanging dogs for money, which would be perfectly moral at a pet store, but to dog fighting itself. Thus Brennan and Jaworski fully acknowledge that commodification can incidentally cause exploitation, rights violations, corruption, and so forth, but it does not essentially cause them. Importantly, the categories above exhaust the moral framework the authors use to evaluate a market exchange. in other words, a market transaction does not exploit, harm, corrupt, or result in rights violations, then it is permissible. Limiting their arguments to these categories of wrongs is an important philosophical strategy that the authors employ. The authors frame their arguments relying only on widespread moral intuitions and avoiding controversial political theory. Brennan and Jaworski's overall strategy is to first articulate the anti-commodification theorists' objections to the best of their abilities, then refute them. one of the book's strengths is the justice it does to its opponents' arguments. At all times, it portrays its adversaries fairly and insightfully. By responding to each argument and describing how each controversial market could be tweaked (thus showcasing that said market is only incidentally and not essentially harmful), their thesis is defended.Also important is Brennan and Jaworski's claim that the concept of a market ought not be restricted to common examples. They note that there are markets that use barter instead of currency, some markets involve government regulation, others may mediate exchange through a broker, etc. This qualification is important to the argument: Brennan and Jaworski's claim is not that anything can be for sale on any market; rather, anything that it is permissible to do for free may be legitimately exchanged on at least one type of market. The concept of market are introduced as a metaphor to explain these variations. These seven dials include participants, means of exchange, price, proportion/distribution, mode of exchange, mode of payment, and motive of exchange, and can conceivably be tweaked in any market to satisfy the objections of anti-commodification theorists. …