:00:20. > :00:23.Welcome to the programme. Michael Sandel is an unusual man. He is a
:00:23. > :00:26.force for -- forced for with the global profile of a rock star. His
:00:27. > :00:35.argument that markets are increasingly destructively and in
:00:35. > :00:38.all parts of life has won award wide following. He is a lecturer
:00:38. > :00:43.that lectures in halls and stadiums. Our financial interests and
:00:43. > :00:53.financial incentives much more interested these days? Is so, how
:00:53. > :00:53.
:00:53. > :01:03.do you draw up the rules as -- for, as he puts it, the more limits of
:01:03. > :01:18.
:01:18. > :01:23.Welcome to the programme. We to be here. You are most famous for your
:01:23. > :01:29.book, but money cannot buy. Perhaps it should be good money should not
:01:29. > :01:35.buy. What is that? Money should not by those things that will corrupt.
:01:35. > :01:40.We have shifted in recent decades from having a market economy to
:01:40. > :01:43.becoming market societies. The difference is this, market
:01:43. > :01:47.economies are tools that are available and effective for
:01:47. > :01:53.organising productive activity. The market society is a place where
:01:53. > :01:58.everything is up for sale. It is aware of life. Market values
:01:58. > :02:03.dominate everything. I will give you an extreme example. There are
:02:04. > :02:08.jails in California, where if you do not like to stand in
:02:08. > :02:16.accommodations and have the money, you can buy a prison cell upgrade
:02:16. > :02:19.for $90 a night. Take another example. If you want to attend a
:02:19. > :02:23.congressional hearing that is likely to be packed out and you do
:02:23. > :02:32.not understand the long queue to get in, you can now go to companies.
:02:32. > :02:39.One of them is called Lime standing. You can pay the homeless to wait in
:02:39. > :02:43.the queue for you. Then lobby yourself and pick your place at the
:02:43. > :02:47.head of the key before this hearing begins. That is a bad thing
:02:47. > :02:54.because? It is a bad thing is the case of Congress because it -- for
:02:54. > :02:58.two reasons. First, it makes money for access, for a representative
:02:58. > :03:03.institution to sit in and listen. Forgive me for interrupting. People
:03:03. > :03:07.can argue that is making it clear just what we know happens. But is
:03:07. > :03:11.how lobbyists work. They have extensive officers. That is true.
:03:11. > :03:21.Maybe we should question the power of money and lobbying in the first
:03:21. > :03:21.
:03:22. > :03:27.place. To be sure of a logical extension. The other thing is about
:03:27. > :03:31.access, Equality, inequality to do with money, power and the voice. It
:03:31. > :03:36.is demeaning to the institutions represented the government. He is
:03:36. > :03:42.treating Congress as if it were a Lady Gaga concert. It might not be
:03:42. > :03:46.so objectionable. We have to reason case-by-case about the value of the
:03:46. > :03:51.institutions or the social practices in question before we can
:03:51. > :03:56.decide whether they should be market highest. We can agree
:03:56. > :04:02.perhaps most people can agree that the sale of better class jail cells
:04:02. > :04:07.might be something that you would object to be caused it might
:04:07. > :04:13.interfere with the purchasing of justice. Your contention is that it
:04:13. > :04:17.is a recent phenomenon. I think a lot of people would say, go back in
:04:17. > :04:23.Britain to Victorian times. Jail cells were sold. Better jail cells
:04:23. > :04:31.were sold. What makes you convinced it is recent? There are precedents
:04:31. > :04:36.for a allowing markets and money to govern part of life. It is
:04:36. > :04:41.interesting we have moved in the last couple of centuries with the
:04:41. > :04:45.development of the modern state, we have moved away from the privatised
:04:45. > :04:50.provision of police protection, or the provision of jails, criminal
:04:50. > :04:56.punishment. What is happening now, it is mainly the last three decades
:04:56. > :04:59.since the early 80s, we have been moving back in the direction of the
:04:59. > :05:05.privatised provision of public service. At me give you a concrete
:05:05. > :05:09.scale. The way we fight wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. There were
:05:09. > :05:14.more paid military contractors on the ground that they work US
:05:14. > :05:17.military troops. This not because we did not have a public debate on
:05:18. > :05:24.whether we wanted to our stores walls of private companies but this
:05:24. > :05:29.is what happened. A lit the ask you about the question of how recent a
:05:29. > :05:35.phenomenon this is. One of your fans is that British columnist. He
:05:35. > :05:41.says that there is a key difficulty in your approach. That is what he
:05:41. > :05:47.calls a historicity. The fact that you do not quite fit into this sort
:05:47. > :05:53.of historical span. In relative terms, he says, with the West has
:05:53. > :05:57.removed parts of life from buying and selling. His example is dowries.
:05:57. > :06:02.The purchase is essentially of women in marriage, which is pretty
:06:02. > :06:10.much disappeared. This is a hugely important transition to many people.
:06:11. > :06:18.It is something you ignore. I think it is morally... It is a moral
:06:18. > :06:22.improvement we get rid of dowries. I am not suggesting that there was
:06:22. > :06:28.not undo power of money, buying and selling in the past. But I do think
:06:28. > :06:33.it is striking that after a couple of centuries, moving away from
:06:33. > :06:36.practices that allowed money to dominate things, such as marriage
:06:37. > :06:41.and Criminal Justice and many other parts of life, in the past three
:06:41. > :06:45.decades, we have been moving in the other direction and without a
:06:45. > :06:51.serious public debate about it. I think it is a great missing debate
:06:51. > :06:57.in politics. Where markers along and do not belong. In your book and
:06:57. > :07:02.lectures, you talk about the influence of money in politics
:07:02. > :07:07.specifically. Again, I think a lot of people would say money has been
:07:07. > :07:13.a key part in the political game. For as long as there has been
:07:13. > :07:17.politicians. Why do you think it is more intrusive now? For a couple of
:07:17. > :07:22.reasons. In the 1980s, we had Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan
:07:22. > :07:26.come in with an explicit argument that markets where the primary
:07:27. > :07:31.instruments for achieving the public. For kidney for interrupting
:07:31. > :07:35.again. My point is not about whether the politicians themselves
:07:35. > :07:42.are in favour of markets but whether politicians themselves can
:07:42. > :07:47.be bought, or the elections can be bought. The money has always found
:07:47. > :07:54.its way into politics. It has always been translated into the
:07:54. > :07:59.exercising power and the voice. But if you look at campaign finance the
:07:59. > :08:04.US, recent Supreme Court decisions cost Citizens United basically
:08:04. > :08:08.struck down legislation that had been designed at least to contain
:08:08. > :08:15.somewhat to limit somewhat the power of money. It is a matter of
:08:15. > :08:18.degree the struggle to limit the power of money in democracies. It
:08:18. > :08:25.is long-standing. But today it seems we are up against a tidal
:08:25. > :08:29.wave of money exerting influence within politics. The scale they
:08:29. > :08:35.have changed. Elections in the US may have been more expensive than
:08:35. > :08:40.once they were. But be principal... One of your critics, a historian,
:08:40. > :08:46.says the idea of elections being bought and sold in the late 21st
:08:46. > :08:50.century would have been laughable to Dickens or Mark Twain. The party
:08:50. > :08:56.bosses would give turkeys at Christmas time to people who voted
:08:56. > :09:01.their way in. Lyndon Johnson, one of your presidents, many people say
:09:01. > :09:07.a great President, he was involved in the frankly the buying and
:09:08. > :09:11.selling of elections for the first time he did politics. There is no
:09:11. > :09:16.shortage of examples of money having influence politics
:09:16. > :09:21.historically. That is not my point. My point is that if we look at
:09:21. > :09:26.every aspect of social life, from family life to personal relations
:09:26. > :09:32.to health to education, teaching and learning, the very fight wars
:09:32. > :09:37.and one criminal justice systems, civic life, in all of those areas,
:09:37. > :09:40.over the last three decades roughly, money and market thinking, and
:09:40. > :09:45.market mechanisms and cash incentives have come to play a
:09:46. > :09:50.growing role. That is not to deny that money has always played a part
:09:50. > :09:55.in politics by no means. The question is, what kind of
:09:55. > :09:58.democratic system do we want? What kind of society do we want? That is
:09:58. > :10:03.the question we need to debate today regardless of the fact there
:10:03. > :10:07.was perhaps no golden age. That is not my suggestion. This is not an
:10:07. > :10:11.exercise in nostalgia. It is an exercise in moral and civic
:10:11. > :10:16.reasoning about what the moral limits of markets should be. But a
:10:17. > :10:22.stroll down to one specific example. The role of money in education. An
:10:22. > :10:27.example you bring up his ace game in Dallas, I think, to get children
:10:27. > :10:34.to read. It was to pay them by the book. $2 per book.The problem was
:10:34. > :10:38.that is what? The risk is the less... Even if it makes -- it
:10:38. > :10:44.makes the keys read more, the less has been caught is that reading is
:10:44. > :10:49.a tour to be done for pay. If that is the lesson students take away,
:10:49. > :10:52.when the money stops, so may the reading and they may develop an
:10:52. > :10:57.instrumental attitude towards teaching and learning rather than
:10:57. > :11:02.merely to love reading for its and sake. Or they could be drawn to
:11:02. > :11:05.books by this incentive, discover the books are a wonderful source of
:11:05. > :11:12.employment -- enjoyment and Richmond, and that becomes enough.
:11:12. > :11:16.If that happens, if that happens, then this game will be successful.
:11:16. > :11:22.While you social in this case but it was not the case? I do not
:11:22. > :11:26.suggest that I was sure. I suggested the economist's logic
:11:26. > :11:32.that cash incentives are additive. They add a further reason. If you
:11:32. > :11:37.love reading, and if your school begins to pay for reading, that may
:11:37. > :11:41.carry along some who do not love reading is the first place. But two
:11:41. > :11:46.incentives may not add up. They may actually, one may undermine the
:11:46. > :11:52.other. That is my worry. You are not certain that is the case.
:11:52. > :11:58.have to look pace -- case by case. But add cheese and norms do we want
:11:58. > :12:08.to court today in students? It is an a brutal question. -- and
:12:08. > :12:09.
:12:09. > :12:15.Does it gives them and his Stuart Hall stance towards reading? We
:12:15. > :12:19.have to look and see how it works. It is not an abstract question. To
:12:20. > :12:27.give you the result in that case, the $2 did lead those young
:12:27. > :12:33.children to read more books. It also led them to read shorter books.
:12:33. > :12:37.One of the criticisms against you, we have to look at things case by
:12:37. > :12:43.case, there is not an over art and philosophy. He raised concerns
:12:43. > :12:50.about the moral limits of markets. You do not lay down clear markets
:12:50. > :12:56.as to where the limits should be. The reason I do not think there is
:12:56. > :13:01.ethical principle or formula that we can plug in or Craig out the
:13:01. > :13:07.right answer in any given case is that where there social practices
:13:07. > :13:12.will be diminished or degraded, with attitudes and norms was caring
:13:12. > :13:17.about will be carved out depends or varies from education to health to
:13:17. > :13:22.military service, to criminal punishment, to family relations, to
:13:22. > :13:27.Auburn sales. We have to ask in each case, what is the proper way
:13:27. > :13:32.of valuing these goods? How do you then decide on what the underlying
:13:32. > :13:37.values are there to guide those decisions? They are to make broad
:13:37. > :13:42.principles. I try to provide a philosophical framework for
:13:42. > :13:47.thinking through these questions. The first principle is, to do with
:13:47. > :13:52.corrosion. Is the voluntary exchange, which is the basis of
:13:52. > :13:57.market transactions, is it truly voluntary? If we had a free market
:13:57. > :14:01.in organs for transplantation, kidneys, if it turned out that only
:14:01. > :14:05.desperately impoverished peasants around the world were selling their
:14:05. > :14:12.kidneys, that might give us reason to wonder whether that transaction
:14:12. > :14:16.is truly voluntary or effectively coerced by diary -- dire economic
:14:16. > :14:21.desperation. That is one principle. That the principle is questions of
:14:21. > :14:26.Curzon offside, will the market transaction crowd out at issues in
:14:26. > :14:30.values with caring about in the case of kidneys, will it lead us to
:14:30. > :14:40.regard our bodies as collections of spare parts and is there something
:14:40. > :14:44.
:14:44. > :14:47.that at odds with human dignity? They may not be broad agreement on
:14:47. > :14:51.where you plunge afford and said that this is right for this is
:14:51. > :14:56.wrong. One writer talk about it transplants in the Boston Review
:14:56. > :14:59.last year. He said that it is not an academic exercise. People are
:14:59. > :15:05.dying right now because of the dearth of kidneys because we have
:15:05. > :15:10.let our revulsion create serial prohibitions on behaviour whether
:15:10. > :15:17.buying and selling a narrow one or, sex, or kidneys. You say that there
:15:17. > :15:20.are underlying principles. Where is the agreement? I do not say that
:15:20. > :15:24.there is an necessarily agreement. It how do you reach agreement?
:15:24. > :15:30.try to reach agreement a free democratic arguments and political
:15:30. > :15:36.debate. What is a striking feature of contemporary political argument
:15:36. > :15:41.is that we have not even asking these questions. We have, in effect,
:15:41. > :15:46.outsourced our moral judgement to markets because we say that we may
:15:46. > :15:52.disagree if we get into debates about the ethics and values so let
:15:52. > :15:59.us suppose a side and let the markets, neutrally as we think,
:15:59. > :16:04.decided. (CROSSTALK). Let me take another example. Carbon trading.
:16:04. > :16:09.There are those who say that countries should emit less carbon.
:16:09. > :16:14.There is also the desperate and urgent needed to reduce carbon
:16:14. > :16:19.emissions. Therefore, if we can take the utilitarian approach which
:16:19. > :16:24.is, for the time being, let us stick an incentive in to insure
:16:24. > :16:30.that less carbon is emitted, it must be a good thing. I am in
:16:30. > :16:34.favour of a carbon tax which would be a way of creating an economic
:16:34. > :16:39.incentive in the price system to reduce emissions. What I objected
:16:39. > :16:44.to and where there was a controversy is a tradable emissions
:16:44. > :16:49.scheme which has been used in some places where companies are involved
:16:49. > :16:53.and successfully. My question was, in global agreements, where
:16:53. > :16:58.countries of the world are trying to agree about shared sacrifice in
:16:58. > :17:03.reducing carbon emissions, should we allow the rich countries to
:17:03. > :17:08.satisfy their obligations under the treaties either by reducing their
:17:08. > :17:13.own emissions or by paying some other country to reduce theirs?
:17:13. > :17:17.That was the issue. I said that it is questionable. There you WACA, I
:17:17. > :17:22.was going to say that the way you phrased it, is rated as a question,
:17:22. > :17:27.should we? And finished by saying it was questionable. This is your
:17:27. > :17:30.style. You have a Socratic dialogue with people and try to engage. This
:17:30. > :17:35.is wonderful rather than being demotic and saying this is the way
:17:35. > :17:41.it should be. Against that, John Gray the British philosophers says
:17:41. > :17:46.that he, are you, seemed confident that these differences can be done
:17:46. > :17:50.in public debate. -- resolve in public debate. He disagrees.
:17:50. > :17:54.Governments cannot be a Socratic dialogue. That seems reasonable.
:17:54. > :17:59.I'm not confident that they can be resolved in the sense of getting
:17:59. > :18:03.everyone to agree. (CROSSTALK). That is true of every question the
:18:03. > :18:10.debate in politics. There is no agreement on every question. I am
:18:10. > :18:16.confident that if we do not have a moral and more robust, ethically
:18:16. > :18:21.engaged type of public discourse, we will not begin to be able to set
:18:21. > :18:25.limits on the operation of markets and we will not begin to protect
:18:25. > :18:31.attitudes and values and norms, non market norms, that are worth caring
:18:31. > :18:35.about. John Gray goes further and says that the trouble is that in a
:18:35. > :18:39.highly -- highly pluralistic society, there is not much
:18:40. > :18:44.consensus on the content of a good life. As a result, there is little
:18:44. > :18:50.agreement on the moral prospects of markets. It is fascinating for us
:18:50. > :18:55.to be discussing is that out there, real life carries on. That is true.
:18:55. > :19:01.This is an argument that can be made about any question in politics.
:19:01. > :19:05.Would you say, Tim, that because people disagreed about what it
:19:05. > :19:11.means to respect human rights and how they should be enforced because
:19:11. > :19:14.we did not had unanimity on which rights are important and should be
:19:15. > :19:19.respected, that we should not concern ourselves with human
:19:19. > :19:23.rights? No, we recognise that where values and the politics in a
:19:23. > :19:27.democratic debate there will be disagreement. In pluralistic
:19:27. > :19:32.societies. I'm saying that we need to enlarge the scope of the ethical
:19:32. > :19:36.debates we have in public life to include questions about how to
:19:36. > :19:42.value goods and social practices where the market may crowd out or
:19:42. > :19:47.corrupt or undermine important values worth caring about. Not that
:19:47. > :19:53.we will agree. I think that having that debate, having a morally more
:19:53. > :19:59.robust debate even where we did not agree may enable us to learn more
:19:59. > :20:05.about the competing principles at stake and deepen democracy because
:20:05. > :20:09.part of our problem now is that for fear of disagreement we had M
:20:09. > :20:13.Teague, we have hollowed-out public discourse. That is why politics is
:20:13. > :20:19.a managerial and technocratic in democracies around the world. That
:20:19. > :20:21.is why there is so much frustration among citizens with the way that we
:20:21. > :20:27.do public discourse and the alternatives being offered by major
:20:27. > :20:34.parties. There is a more sinister reading of your introduction of
:20:34. > :20:38.this idea of virtue. Sinister Ricky Petterd I will quote Stephen Holmes,
:20:38. > :20:42.a university law professor at New York University who says that you
:20:43. > :20:48.are demilitarising the ideals of virtue in community using these
:20:48. > :20:56.watered-down terms. Way your predecessors would have invoked a
:20:56. > :21:02.man in this. Do you recognise that talking about virtue in this way
:21:02. > :21:06.can mean that people's choices can feel as though they are being
:21:06. > :21:15.constrained? I do want to demilitarise virtue. I plead guilty
:21:15. > :21:21.to that. I want us to get over the habit of saying that we have to
:21:21. > :21:25.leave questions of the Good Life, questions of values and ethics,
:21:25. > :21:29.questions of virtues including civic virtues, be at leave those
:21:29. > :21:33.outside. We must Park then at the door before we enter the public
:21:33. > :21:38.square. That is a bad habit. Perhaps because we cannot agree on
:21:38. > :21:42.virtue. There are a lot of things that we cannot agree about but we
:21:42. > :21:50.must debate politically if we are to govern ourselves. What happens
:21:50. > :21:54.when, for fear of disagreement, we try to rule out of public debate
:21:54. > :22:01.questions about how to live our lives together or what is a good
:22:01. > :22:05.life. What happens is that politics becomes empty of larger meaning. I
:22:05. > :22:11.think that accounts for the discontent that is so widespread
:22:11. > :22:15.with democracy today. People want politics to be about big things and
:22:15. > :22:18.to elevate the terms of public discourse. Listen, all that you
:22:18. > :22:25.have said here and all the two had been saying over the past few years
:22:25. > :22:29.has won new a huge following. It would be reasonable to say. A lot
:22:29. > :22:33.of people had been hungry to hear what you have had to say. At the
:22:33. > :22:40.same time, that has engendered a certain amount of sleepiness among
:22:40. > :22:49.your peers. That gets you -- sniffiness. I think that what I'm
:22:49. > :22:52.trying to do is - and in the recent book, What Money Can't Buy, I have
:22:52. > :22:59.tried to do this - is to do political philosophy in a serious
:22:59. > :23:04.way. Not dumbing it down but in a serious way. He used stories and
:23:04. > :23:09.examples to illustrate the philosophical arguments so that the
:23:09. > :23:15.book and the arguments can be accessible not just to scholars but
:23:15. > :23:20.to anyone who is interested and who is concerned about our civic life.
:23:21. > :23:27.I think that philosophy can have and should have a public role. I
:23:27. > :23:31.think that some philosophy is, like many academic subjects, narrowly
:23:31. > :23:35.technical and that is important and has its own integrity. I also think,
:23:35. > :23:39.especially for political philosophy which is my subject, but it is
:23:39. > :23:46.important also for some of us at least to try to address big public
:23:46. > :23:53.questions in a way that interested readers anywhere can think about.
:23:53. > :23:58.But they can argue with, and that it is a project of public or so
:23:58. > :24:02.feet -- public philosophy that is not inconsistent with doing good