The Vendor Trap: Why Selling Spirituality Doesn’t Work

Michael Sandel, in his book What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets, argues that the two decades since the end of the Cold War have been an era of market triumphalism. As winners often do, we have over-learned the lesson of our victory. The vindication of free markets has led us to assume that markets ought to govern practically everything. The reach of markets, and market-oriented thinking, into aspects of life traditionally governed by nonmarket norms is one of the most significant developments of our time. Consider the proliferation of for-profit schools, hospitals, and prisons, and the outsourcing […]

Share