Michael Sandel - Political Philosopher HARDtalk

Welcome to the programme. Michael Sandel is an unusual man. He is a

force for -- forced for with the global profile of a rock star. His

argument that markets are increasingly destructively and in

all parts of life has won award wide following. He is a lecturer

that lectures in halls and stadiums. Our financial interests and

financial incentives much more interested these days? Is so, how

do you draw up the rules as -- for, as he puts it, the more limits of

Welcome to the programme. We to be here. You are most famous for your

book, but money cannot buy. Perhaps it should be good money should not

buy. What is that? Money should not by those things that will corrupt.

We have shifted in recent decades from having a market economy to

becoming market societies. The difference is this, market

economies are tools that are available and effective for

organising productive activity. The market society is a place where

everything is up for sale. It is aware of life. Market values

dominate everything. I will give you an extreme example. There are

jails in California, where if you do not like to stand in

accommodations and have the money, you can buy a prison cell upgrade

for $90 a night. Take another example. If you want to attend a

congressional hearing that is likely to be packed out and you do

not understand the long queue to get in, you can now go to companies.

One of them is called Lime standing. You can pay the homeless to wait in

the queue for you. Then lobby yourself and pick your place at the

head of the key before this hearing begins. That is a bad thing

because? It is a bad thing is the case of Congress because it -- for

two reasons. First, it makes money for access, for a representative

institution to sit in and listen. Forgive me for interrupting. People

can argue that is making it clear just what we know happens. But is

how lobbyists work. They have extensive officers. That is true.

Maybe we should question the power of money and lobbying in the first

place. To be sure of a logical extension. The other thing is about

access, Equality, inequality to do with money, power and the voice. It

is demeaning to the institutions represented the government. He is

treating Congress as if it were a Lady Gaga concert. It might not be

so objectionable. We have to reason case-by-case about the value of the

institutions or the social practices in question before we can

decide whether they should be market highest. We can agree

perhaps most people can agree that the sale of better class jail cells

might be something that you would object to be caused it might

interfere with the purchasing of justice. Your contention is that it

is a recent phenomenon. I think a lot of people would say, go back in

Britain to Victorian times. Jail cells were sold. Better jail cells

were sold. What makes you convinced it is recent? There are precedents

for a allowing markets and money to govern part of life. It is

interesting we have moved in the last couple of centuries with the

development of the modern state, we have moved away from the privatised

provision of police protection, or the provision of jails, criminal

punishment. What is happening now, it is mainly the last three decades

since the early 80s, we have been moving back in the direction of the

privatised provision of public service. At me give you a concrete

scale. The way we fight wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. There were

more paid military contractors on the ground that they work US

military troops. This not because we did not have a public debate on

whether we wanted to our stores walls of private companies but this

is what happened. A lit the ask you about the question of how recent a

phenomenon this is. One of your fans is that British columnist. He

says that there is a key difficulty in your approach. That is what he

calls a historicity. The fact that you do not quite fit into this sort

of historical span. In relative terms, he says, with the West has

removed parts of life from buying and selling. His example is dowries.

The purchase is essentially of women in marriage, which is pretty

much disappeared. This is a hugely important transition to many people.

It is something you ignore. I think it is morally... It is a moral

improvement we get rid of dowries. I am not suggesting that there was

not undo power of money, buying and selling in the past. But I do think

it is striking that after a couple of centuries, moving away from

practices that allowed money to dominate things, such as marriage

and Criminal Justice and many other parts of life, in the past three

decades, we have been moving in the other direction and without a

serious public debate about it. I think it is a great missing debate

in politics. Where markers along and do not belong. In your book and

lectures, you talk about the influence of money in politics

specifically. Again, I think a lot of people would say money has been

a key part in the political game. For as long as there has been

politicians. Why do you think it is more intrusive now? For a couple of

reasons. In the 1980s, we had Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan

come in with an explicit argument that markets where the primary

instruments for achieving the public. For kidney for interrupting

again. My point is not about whether the politicians themselves

are in favour of markets but whether politicians themselves can

be bought, or the elections can be bought. The money has always found

its way into politics. It has always been translated into the

exercising power and the voice. But if you look at campaign finance the

US, recent Supreme Court decisions cost Citizens United basically

struck down legislation that had been designed at least to contain

somewhat to limit somewhat the power of money. It is a matter of

degree the struggle to limit the power of money in democracies. It

is long-standing. But today it seems we are up against a tidal

wave of money exerting influence within politics. The scale they

have changed. Elections in the US may have been more expensive than

once they were. But be principal... One of your critics, a historian,

says the idea of elections being bought and sold in the late 21st

century would have been laughable to Dickens or Mark Twain. The party

bosses would give turkeys at Christmas time to people who voted

their way in. Lyndon Johnson, one of your presidents, many people say

a great President, he was involved in the frankly the buying and

selling of elections for the first time he did politics. There is no

shortage of examples of money having influence politics

historically. That is not my point. My point is that if we look at

every aspect of social life, from family life to personal relations

to health to education, teaching and learning, the very fight wars

and one criminal justice systems, civic life, in all of those areas,

over the last three decades roughly, money and market thinking, and

market mechanisms and cash incentives have come to play a

growing role. That is not to deny that money has always played a part

in politics by no means. The question is, what kind of

democratic system do we want? What kind of society do we want? That is

the question we need to debate today regardless of the fact there

was perhaps no golden age. That is not my suggestion. This is not an

exercise in nostalgia. It is an exercise in moral and civic

reasoning about what the moral limits of markets should be. But a

stroll down to one specific example. The role of money in education. An

example you bring up his ace game in Dallas, I think, to get children

to read. It was to pay them by the book. $2 per book.The problem was

that is what? The risk is the less... Even if it makes -- it

makes the keys read more, the less has been caught is that reading is

a tour to be done for pay. If that is the lesson students take away,

when the money stops, so may the reading and they may develop an

instrumental attitude towards teaching and learning rather than

merely to love reading for its and sake. Or they could be drawn to

books by this incentive, discover the books are a wonderful source of

employment -- enjoyment and Richmond, and that becomes enough.

If that happens, if that happens, then this game will be successful.

While you social in this case but it was not the case? I do not

suggest that I was sure. I suggested the economist's logic

that cash incentives are additive. They add a further reason. If you

love reading, and if your school begins to pay for reading, that may

carry along some who do not love reading is the first place. But two

incentives may not add up. They may actually, one may undermine the

other. That is my worry. You are not certain that is the case.

have to look pace -- case by case. But add cheese and norms do we want

to court today in students? It is an a brutal question. -- and

Does it gives them and his Stuart Hall stance towards reading? We

have to look and see how it works. It is not an abstract question. To

give you the result in that case, the $2 did lead those young

children to read more books. It also led them to read shorter books.

One of the criticisms against you, we have to look at things case by

case, there is not an over art and philosophy. He raised concerns

about the moral limits of markets. You do not lay down clear markets

as to where the limits should be. The reason I do not think there is

ethical principle or formula that we can plug in or Craig out the

right answer in any given case is that where there social practices

will be diminished or degraded, with attitudes and norms was caring

about will be carved out depends or varies from education to health to

military service, to criminal punishment, to family relations, to

Auburn sales. We have to ask in each case, what is the proper way

of valuing these goods? How do you then decide on what the underlying

values are there to guide those decisions? They are to make broad

principles. I try to provide a philosophical framework for

thinking through these questions. The first principle is, to do with

corrosion. Is the voluntary exchange, which is the basis of

market transactions, is it truly voluntary? If we had a free market

in organs for transplantation, kidneys, if it turned out that only

desperately impoverished peasants around the world were selling their

kidneys, that might give us reason to wonder whether that transaction

is truly voluntary or effectively coerced by diary -- dire economic

desperation. That is one principle. That the principle is questions of

Curzon offside, will the market transaction crowd out at issues in

values with caring about in the case of kidneys, will it lead us to

regard our bodies as collections of spare parts and is there something

that at odds with human dignity? They may not be broad agreement on

where you plunge afford and said that this is right for this is

wrong. One writer talk about it transplants in the Boston Review

last year. He said that it is not an academic exercise. People are

dying right now because of the dearth of kidneys because we have

let our revulsion create serial prohibitions on behaviour whether

buying and selling a narrow one or, sex, or kidneys. You say that there

are underlying principles. Where is the agreement? I do not say that

there is an necessarily agreement. It how do you reach agreement?

try to reach agreement a free democratic arguments and political

debate. What is a striking feature of contemporary political argument

is that we have not even asking these questions. We have, in effect,

outsourced our moral judgement to markets because we say that we may

disagree if we get into debates about the ethics and values so let

us suppose a side and let the markets, neutrally as we think,

decided. (CROSSTALK). Let me take another example. Carbon trading.

There are those who say that countries should emit less carbon.

There is also the desperate and urgent needed to reduce carbon

emissions. Therefore, if we can take the utilitarian approach which

is, for the time being, let us stick an incentive in to insure

that less carbon is emitted, it must be a good thing. I am in

favour of a carbon tax which would be a way of creating an economic

incentive in the price system to reduce emissions. What I objected

to and where there was a controversy is a tradable emissions

scheme which has been used in some places where companies are involved

and successfully. My question was, in global agreements, where

countries of the world are trying to agree about shared sacrifice in

reducing carbon emissions, should we allow the rich countries to

satisfy their obligations under the treaties either by reducing their

own emissions or by paying some other country to reduce theirs?

That was the issue. I said that it is questionable. There you WACA, I

was going to say that the way you phrased it, is rated as a question,

should we? And finished by saying it was questionable. This is your

style. You have a Socratic dialogue with people and try to engage. This

is wonderful rather than being demotic and saying this is the way

it should be. Against that, John Gray the British philosophers says

that he, are you, seemed confident that these differences can be done

in public debate. -- resolve in public debate. He disagrees.

Governments cannot be a Socratic dialogue. That seems reasonable.

I'm not confident that they can be resolved in the sense of getting

everyone to agree. (CROSSTALK). That is true of every question the

debate in politics. There is no agreement on every question. I am

confident that if we do not have a moral and more robust, ethically

engaged type of public discourse, we will not begin to be able to set

limits on the operation of markets and we will not begin to protect

attitudes and values and norms, non market norms, that are worth caring

about. John Gray goes further and says that the trouble is that in a

highly -- highly pluralistic society, there is not much

consensus on the content of a good life. As a result, there is little

agreement on the moral prospects of markets. It is fascinating for us

to be discussing is that out there, real life carries on. That is true.

This is an argument that can be made about any question in politics.

Would you say, Tim, that because people disagreed about what it

means to respect human rights and how they should be enforced because

we did not had unanimity on which rights are important and should be

respected, that we should not concern ourselves with human

rights? No, we recognise that where values and the politics in a

democratic debate there will be disagreement. In pluralistic

societies. I'm saying that we need to enlarge the scope of the ethical

debates we have in public life to include questions about how to

value goods and social practices where the market may crowd out or

corrupt or undermine important values worth caring about. Not that

we will agree. I think that having that debate, having a morally more

robust debate even where we did not agree may enable us to learn more

about the competing principles at stake and deepen democracy because

part of our problem now is that for fear of disagreement we had M

Teague, we have hollowed-out public discourse. That is why politics is

a managerial and technocratic in democracies around the world. That

is why there is so much frustration among citizens with the way that we

do public discourse and the alternatives being offered by major

parties. There is a more sinister reading of your introduction of

this idea of virtue. Sinister Ricky Petterd I will quote Stephen Holmes,

a university law professor at New York University who says that you

are demilitarising the ideals of virtue in community using these

watered-down terms. Way your predecessors would have invoked a

man in this. Do you recognise that talking about virtue in this way

can mean that people's choices can feel as though they are being

constrained? I do want to demilitarise virtue. I plead guilty

to that. I want us to get over the habit of saying that we have to

leave questions of the Good Life, questions of values and ethics,

questions of virtues including civic virtues, be at leave those

outside. We must Park then at the door before we enter the public

square. That is a bad habit. Perhaps because we cannot agree on

virtue. There are a lot of things that we cannot agree about but we

must debate politically if we are to govern ourselves. What happens

when, for fear of disagreement, we try to rule out of public debate

questions about how to live our lives together or what is a good

life. What happens is that politics becomes empty of larger meaning. I

think that accounts for the discontent that is so widespread

with democracy today. People want politics to be about big things and

to elevate the terms of public discourse. Listen, all that you

have said here and all the two had been saying over the past few years

has won new a huge following. It would be reasonable to say. A lot

of people had been hungry to hear what you have had to say. At the

same time, that has engendered a certain amount of sleepiness among

your peers. That gets you -- sniffiness. I think that what I'm

trying to do is - and in the recent book, What Money Can't Buy, I have

tried to do this - is to do political philosophy in a serious

way. Not dumbing it down but in a serious way. He used stories and

examples to illustrate the philosophical arguments so that the

book and the arguments can be accessible not just to scholars but

to anyone who is interested and who is concerned about our civic life.

I think that philosophy can have and should have a public role. I

think that some philosophy is, like many academic subjects, narrowly

technical and that is important and has its own integrity. I also think,

especially for political philosophy which is my subject, but it is

important also for some of us at least to try to address big public

questions in a way that interested readers anywhere can think about.

But they can argue with, and that it is a project of public or so

feet -- public philosophy that is not inconsistent with doing good