金钱至上的国度

    你前额的方寸之地价值几何？如果你手头紧，而广告商对你的这块私有地盘感兴趣，你会考虑出售吗？你的生育能力，或者你的器官能出售吗？你会出价多少？毕竟，正如俗话所说的，任何人都可待价而沽。

    哈佛大学政府系教授迈克尔•桑德尔在《金钱无法买到的东西》一书中表示，事情可能没那么简单。他在书中详尽探讨了市场和市场思维通过很多种途径渗透进我们的生活，而有些情况对我们是不利的。

    桑德尔表示，传统观点认为，人类行为的某些方面被认为是神圣不可侵犯，或是金钱无法购买的。但现在，它们却遭受到强大的市场力量的侵蚀，比如在个人身体上购买广告空间，提供奖金来刺激学生好好念书，以及利诱吸毒者同意接受绝育手术。他写道，“在这二十年中，商业化四处弥漫，无所不在，象征着一个一切事物均可明码标价用来出售的世界。”

    虽然将我们自己和其他人拥有的最私密的东西作为商品出售，并不算什么新鲜事（见下：奴隶和卖淫），但桑德尔认为，市场思维在过去的这几十年里变得尤为重要。他说得很有道理。在过去的二三十年里，我们越来越信仰私有化以及金钱激励手段的效力。我们聘用私人安保公司来管理监狱，派遣雇佣兵去为国家打仗，出钱让盈利性学校来教育我们的孩子，这些都获得了不同程度的成功。

    桑德尔表示，我们为这种行为付出的代价有几种表现方式。首先，穷人会在更大程度上受到个人空间商业化的影响。想想看，能有多少富人排队要求把自己的房屋或者身体当做广告牌呢？在这种情况下，出售决策并不一定像表面看起来那样，是在独立和自由的基础上做出的。而且，在这个变得越来越利欲熏心的社会里，富人比穷人更有优势。打个比方，如果你承诺一大笔捐赠，就能为孩子进哈佛或耶鲁等名校铺好路，那何须逼着孩子辛苦念书呢？

    有些交易行为和激励措施的意图可能是善意的，比如捐助贫苦的人群，或者鼓励学生用功学习。但我们对这些行为的看法发生了改变。突然之间，刻苦学习不再是为了学习本身，而是意味着能赚点零花钱。卖血也能赚钱，但同时也让你丧失了做善事带来的道德满足感。这些行为本身没有变，但行为动机发生了变化，因此它们的意义也随之改变，这些变化并不一定都是好的。

    How much is the space on your forehead worth? Would you sell that especially personal piece of real estate to an interested advertiser if you were strapped for cash? How about your ability to give birth? Or maybe your organs? What's your price? After all, as the proverb goes, every man has one.

    In What Money Can't Buy, Harvard government professor Michael J. Sandel argues that it might not be that simple. He takes readers on an exhaustive tour of the many ways in which markets and market thinking have infiltrated our lives, sometimes to our detriment.

    Whether it's buying ad space on human bodies, paying schoolchildren to read more books, or giving drug addicts money in exchange for accepting sterilization treatment, Sandel argues that we've suffered from the penetration of market forces into aspects of the human experience that were traditionally thought to be either sacred or beyond monetary value. "The commercialism of the last two decades has displayed a distinctive kind of boundlessness, emblematic of a world in which everything is for sale," he writes.

    While commercializing our most intimate possessions and those that belong to others is nothing new (see under: slavery and prostitution), Sandel suggests that the past few decades have been an especially victorious time for market thinking. He has a point. Over the past 20 to 30 years, we have increasingly placed our faith in privatization and the power of financial incentives. We hire private security companies to run our prisons, send mercenaries to fight our wars, and pay for-profit schools to educate our children, all with varying degrees of success.

    The price we pay for this behavior plays out in several ways, Sandel argues. First off, poorer people are impacted disproportionately by the commercialization of personal space. How many affluent people are lining up to turn their houses or bodies into billboards? In this way, the decision to sell isn't necessarily as independent and free as it may look. In a society increasingly driven by financial power, moreover, the wealthy hold even better hands than they would otherwise. Why bother encouraging your kid to study hard if you can simply grease his path into Harvard or Yale with the promise of a massive donation?

    Some of these tradeoffs and incentives may have noble intentions, such as putting more money in the hands of the needy, or encouraging students to hit the books. Yet they also change how we value these activities. Suddenly, doing well in school becomes about pocketing extra change rather than learning for its own sake. Selling your blood puts money in your wallet, but it also deprives you of the moral reward of altruism. The behaviors may be the same, but the motivations have changed. As a result their meaning also changes, not always for the better.