For many, markets are the most efficient
way in general to organize production and distribution in a complex economy. But
what about those markets we might label noxious--markets in addictive drugs,
say, or in sex? In Why Some Things Should Not Be for Sale, philosopher Debra
Satz takes a penetrating look at those commodity exchanges that strike most of
us as problematic. What considerations, she asks, ought to guide the debates
about such markets? Satz contends that categories previously used by
philosophers and economists are of limited use in addressing such markets
because they are assumed to be homogenous. Accordingly, she offers a broader and
more nuanced view of markets--one that goes beyond the usual discussions of
efficiency and distributional equality--to show how markets shape our culture,
foster or thwart human development, and create and support structures of power.
Nobel Laureate Kenneth J. Arrow calls this book "a work that will have to be
studied and taken account of by all those concerned by the role of the market as
compared with other social mechanisms."
