What Money Can't Buy by Michael Sandel: Overview (2024)

Although What Money Can’t Buy received less fanfare than Sandel’s previous work Justice, it was still generally well-received by critics. Reviewers applauded the book’s measured and politically philosophical approach. One critic also lauded Sandel for bringing the discussion of our market society out of academia and into the public discourse.

However, some critics pointed out the book’s lack of specific and practical solutions to the problems that Sandel identifies. In particular, skeptics pointed to the apparent hollowness of Sandel’s proposed solution to the problem of the overbearing influence of markets: to simply “debate” these markets’ role in our lives. They noted Sandel’s lack of clarity on what the parameters of such a debate would be, who would mediate it or decide its outcome, and how we might implement its results.

Other reviewers noted that the book fails to establish a clear framework for answering its central question: What should be the moral limits of the market? By failing to create some test or standard for when a particular transaction has violated moral norms, these reviewers argue that Sandel’s book leaves the reader with no clear guidance for which market behaviors are moral and which are immoral.

A common critique of markets—and one that is voiced consistently by Sandel throughout What Money Can’t Buy—is that markets blur the line between morality and immorality by giving tacit approval to socially undesirable traits like selfishness and greed.

However, some commentators argue precisely the opposite: that the market economy rests on a solid moral foundation that encourages morally correct behavior. As William Easterly writes in The White Man’s Burden, markets require a high degree of social trust (a morally positive trait) among strangers. This is because an economy based on voluntary transactions is only viable if customers can trust that they won’t be ripped off, that what’s being sold is genuine, and that people will honor debts and pay for goods they’ve ordered. Thus, according to this line of reasoning, free-market capitalism fosters virtues like self-reliance, social trust, and self-restraint.

Moreover, markets produce better results, as capitalist societies are, on the whole, more prosperous and equitable than the preindustrial, precapitalist, traditional societies that came before them. This has led market proponents to dub capitalism the most moral and virtuous economic system in human history.