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01-09-2018 | Original Research

Commodification and Human Interests

Author: Julian J. Koplin

Published in: Journal of Bioethical Inquiry | Issue 3/2018

Abstract

In Markets Without Limits and a series of related papers, Jason Brennan and Peter Jaworski argue that it is morally permissible to buy and sell anything that it is morally permissible to possess and exchange outside of the market. Accordingly, we should (Brennan and Jaworski argue) open markets in “contested commodities” including blood, gametes, surrogacy services, and transplantable organs. This paper clarifies some important aspects of the case for market boundaries and in so doing shows why there are in fact moral limits to the market. I argue that the case for restricting the scope of the market does not (as Brennan and Jaworski assume) turn on the idea that some things are constitutively non-market goods; it turns instead on the idea that treating some things according to market norms would threaten the realization of particular kinds of human interests.

Markets Without Limits uses the term “anti-commodification theorists” to refer to both market abolitionists and moral boundary theorists.

Brennan and Jaworski acknowledge that in listing such a wide range of possibilities, they have adopted a broad definition of what a market is. They also claim that the authors they criticize also adopt a broad definition of markets but do not provide any textual justification for this claim (Brennan and Jaworski 2016, 54).

This minimal case for market boundaries leaves many important issues open. Two important questions— which unfortunately fall outside the scope of this paper—are which (if any) justifications for market boundaries depend on perfectionist judgements about the relative value of different conceptions of human flourishing and, if so, whether this commitment to perfectionism is morally problematic. For a defence of the view that the case for market boundaries is compatible with the liberal principle of state neutrality, see Keat (2000).

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Title: Commodification and Human Interests
Author: Julian J. Koplin
Publication date: 01-09-2018
Publisher: Springer Singapore
Published in: Journal of Bioethical Inquiry / Issue 3/2018
Print ISSN: 1176-7529
Electronic ISSN: 1872-4353
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11673-018-9857-6

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