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Licensed Unlicensed Requires Authentication Published by De Gruyter October 6, 2015

In Defense of Commodification

  • Jason Brennan EMAIL logo and Peter Jaworski

Abstract

We aim to show anti-commodification theorists that their complaints about the scope of the market are exaggerated. There are we agree things that should not be bought and sold but that’s only because they are things people shouldn’t have or do or exchange in the first place. Beyond that we argue there are legitimate moral worries about how we buy trade and sell but no legitimate worries about what we buy trade and sell. In almost every interesting case where they have argued markets are morally impermissible on the contrary we argue such markets are permissible. Where they see the market as having a fundamentally amoral ethos or as tending to corrupt us we see it as moral and morally ameliorative. Where they think the solution is to contract the market we think the solution is to expand it.

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Published Online: 2015-10-06
Published in Print: 2015-11-01

©2015 by De Gruyter

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