Modern life, at a cost
Looking for a not-so-light summer read? In July and August, the Gazette will showcase recent books by Harvard authors. Everything is for sale: It’s a refrain we hear time and again, the lament of anti-consumerist free spirits and the taunt of crusading capitalists. It’s also increasingly true. From the right to pollute to a spot at the front of an amusement-park line, or even advertising space in jails and public schools, nearly every aspect of everyday life now comes with a price tag. “These days there are fewer and fewer things that money can’t buy,” says Michael Sandel, Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of Government in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. What Sandel wants readers to consider in his new book, “What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets,” is whether there should be limits — and where. The question is nothing if not timely. Nearly four years after the...