Discussing Why Some Things Should Not Be for Sale

In Why Some Things Should Not Be For Sale, Debra Satz (2010) argues that four considerations should guide moral reflection on markets: does a market involve weak agency, extreme vulnerability, extremely harmful outcomes to individuals, or extremely harmful outcomes to society? If the answer is yes to one or more of these questions, a market could very well be noxious. In this paper, I assess to what extent Satz’ framework can indeed be used to discuss the moral status of markets. I claim that (1) it would be desirable to have a criterion that tells us when weak agency and extreme vulnerability make a market noxious; (2) it is unproductive to discuss the moral status of a theoretical market without first thinking about a regulatory framework for this market; and (3) it is paramount to consider all empirical evidence available on markets because they might turn out very differently in reality from how they look on paper.