Actual Text 1: Are there some things that money can buy but shouldn't? Consider a good that can be bought but whose buying and selling is morally controversial- a human kidney for example. Some people defend markets morally objectionable. It it's wrong to buy a kidney, the problem is not, as with the Nobel Prize, that the money dissolves the good. The kidney will work (assuming a good match) regardless of the monetary payment. So to determine whether kidneys should or shouldn't be up for sale, we have to engage in a moral inquiry. We have to examine the arguments for and against oran sales and determine which more persuasive.
Response 1: I have thought and dealt a lot with the idea of money buying things that they should or should not necessarily be able to do. As we discussed in last class, for example, is the education we are investing hundreds of thousands of dollars in equal to money or a job? More simply, is it fair that we are buying a education so that we can get a job later on? I feel we have all been very privileged in the educational sense, but there is a part of me that questions if we are just buying our education and inevitably a very good job. Personally, I can admit that many of the opportunities I have had have been because of money, for example internships and jobs that I have had. It's interesting that in this excerpt he talks about things that money can and can't buy, I see it resonating with what we're talking about in class with Fair Trade organizations.
Actual Text 2: consider now another expression of friendship- gift giving. Unlike wedding speeches, gifts have an unavoidably material aspect. But with some gifts, the monetary aspect is relatively obscure; with others, it is explicit. Recent decades ahve brought a trend toward the monetization of gifts, yet another example of increasing commodification of social life.
Response 2: Sandel spends a of time in this excerpt talking about the concept of gifts, and it made me think a lot about what a gift says. I cannot disagree with him when he says that nowadays a gift is measured by its monetary value, and less about its personal or sentimental value. This can clearly be seen, as he states, with the increase in giving gift cards and cash. He claims that "gift cards represent a halfway house between choosing a specific gift and giving cash", which I think is an interesting, yet very true, way of seeing gift cards. To me, giving a gift card or cash is like saying, "Here, I like you this many dollars worth". As I kept reading, I see how Sandel really has made a science out of the concept of gifts and gift cards, with statistics on yearly trends.
I have read and studied Sandel previously in a political theory class in high school, specifically his book "Justice: What's the right thing to do?". Here is the link to his video lecture on the book, which I find very interesting and entertaining.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBdfcR-8hEY
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