Markets and morals: hurrah for the man who says there are things you can\’t buy
Michael J Sandel\’s argument that the degradation of values is flourishing to our cost should be heeded
The man\’s argument is that there are things that you can buy but which you should not. He doesn\’t even say that purchasing such things should be made illegal: he says that you just shouldn\’t buy them.
Entirely opposite to The Observer\’s formulation that there are things which you cannot buy.
The Cecil Chao story is basically: old bloke would like some grandchildren.
“Sandel gives the example of the rich hiring the homeless to do their queuing for them for the delights in life”
If paying someone to stand in a line is immoral, where does that leave us when it comes to paying someone to clean a toilet?
And who cleans the toilets at the Guardian?
The late Auberon Waugh said ‘I have decided that life is too short to buy the Observer’ – This was back in 2000, and since then I have never bought a copy of the paper. It seemed even poorer than its demented weekday cousin. The article is proof positive that it appears to have subbed out its editorial writing duties to 15 year olds. What the last paragraph seems to suggest is returning to a non-monetized, primitive ‘Arcadian’ society or possibly something along the lines of some primitive South Sea Island tribe. Nonsense is far too charitable a term for it.
“And who cleans the toilets at the Guardian?” … Nigerians probably.
To be fair to whoever wrote the peice, this was probably a sub-ed messing up – I’ve seen the same sort of thing happen over at the torygraph blogs too.
I used to freelance a little for a specialist hobby magazine (a feature every couple of months paid nicely for the hobby) and ignorant sub-eds intoducing errors were the bain of my life then too…