The View | One Harvard professor is getting it all wrong when it comes to understanding morality and the economy

Michael Sandel teaches Government at Harvard, where his course “Justice” has been attended by some 15,000 Harvard students and adapted into a 12-part TV series. He is believed to have a large number of fans in China.

In 2013 he published What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets. As an economist, I read the book to seek enlightenment about a subject I have been teaching for almost 40 years, but I was deeply disappointed. Sandel is sophisticated about moral and political theory, yet his book is puzzlingly shallow. I was also shocked by the moral implications of what it espoused.

Recently, though, a dear friend who liked the book wanted to discuss its contents with me. In the process of putting together my thoughts, I decided it deserved a wider audience, especially at a time when grassroots politics in our city is turning toward community solidarity and activism.

Economists like markets because under certain conditions (such as competition between producers), they tend to promote innovation and the efficient allocation of resources.

In contrast, moral philosophers tend to focus on the fairness of a market system. There are multiple aspects to this, such as inequality and exploitation.

However, Sandel’s critique is not about fairness or efficiency. Rather, he purports to demonstrate that markets corrupt, or degrade, the goods they are used to allocate.