Taboo Trades
Taboo Trades
Markets Without Limits with Jason Brennan & Peter Jaworski
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Jason Brennan and Peter Jaworski join Kim Krawiec, student co-hosts Joe Keys and Jake Ross, and members of UVA Law’s Taboo Trades seminar to discuss the second edition of Markets without Limits: Moral Virtues and Commercial Interests, a foundational work in the debate over the moral limits of markets.
Their central claim is provocative: if you may do something for free and whether to do it is within your discretion, there is some way you may do it for money. The argument leaves room for moral duties and extensive regulation while challenging critics to explain what payment itself makes wrong.
The conversation explores the burden of proof in arguments against markets, the famous Israeli daycare-fine study, and whether money corrupts our motives or changes what we learn about a situation. Examples ranging from dog breeding and education to organ markets and lifesaving rescues raise difficult questions about inequality, discretion, and the gap between moral permission and workable legal rules.
About the Guests
Jason Brennan is the Robert J. and Elizabeth Flanagan Family Professor of Strategy, Economics, Ethics, and Public Policy at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business. A political philosopher, he writes about democracy, liberty, and the ethics of markets.
Peter Jaworski is an associate teaching professor at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business, where he teaches business ethics. His research examines the moral limits of markets, including compensation for blood plasma donors. He was Taboo Trades’ inaugural guest in season one, episode one.
About the Host
Kimberly D. Krawiec is the Charles O. Gregory Professor of Law and Glynn Family Bicentennial Professor of Law at the University of Virginia School of Law. She studies contested exchanges, including organ donation, reproductive markets, and sex work, as well as financial regulation and business organizations. She hosts Taboo Trades.
About the Student Co-Hosts
Joe Keys is a third-year student at the University of Virginia School of Law and a student co-host of this episode.
Jake Ross is a second-year student at the University of Virginia School of Law and a student co-host of this episode.
Books and Articles Discussed, Referenced, or Related
- Jason Brennan and Peter M. Jaworski, Markets without Limits: Moral Virtues and Commercial Interests, 2nd ed. (Routledge 2022).
- Jason Brennan and Peter Martin Jaworski, “Markets without Symbolic Limits,” 125 Ethics 1053–1077 (2015).
- Uri Gneezy and Aldo Rustichini, “A Fine Is a Price,” 29 Journal of Legal Studies 1–17 (2000).
- Uri Gneezy and Aldo Rustichini, “Pay Enough or Don’t Pay at All,” 115 Quarterly Journal of Economics 791–810 (2000).
- Michael J. Sandel, “How Markets Crowd Out Morals,” with Herbert Gintis’s response, “Giving Economists Their Due,” and Sandel’s reply, “Keeping Markets in Their Place” (Boston Review 2012).
- Mark Wells, “Markets with Some Limits,” 51 Journal of Value Inquiry 611–618 (2017).
- Peter M. Jaworski, Bloody Well Pay Them: The Case for Voluntary Remunerated Plasma Collections (2020).
- Kimberly D. Krawiec, “Markets, Repugnance, and Externalities,” 19 Journal of Institutional Economics 944–955 (2023).
- Kieran Healy and Kimberly D. Krawiec, “Repugnance Management and Transactions in the Body,” 107 American Economic Review 86–90 (2017).
Related Episode
- Plasma with Peter Jaworski — Taboo Trades, season one, episode one (August 25, 2020).
Hey. Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Taboo Trades podcast, a show about stuff we aren't supposed to sell but do anyway. I'm your host, Kim Kravik. Hello, and welcome to Taboo Trades. I'm your host, Kim Kravik. Today I'm joined by Jason Brennan and Peter Jaworski, two leading voices in the debate over the moral limits of markets. They're here shortly after the release of the second edition of Markets Without Moral Virtues and Commercial Interests, a foundational book for the questions we explore on this podcast. Their central claim is provocative. If you may do something for free, there is some way you may do it for money. That leaves plenty of room for moral duties and regulation, but challenges us to explain exactly what makes payment objectionable. Both guests teach at Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business. Jason is the Flanagan family professor and a political philosopher whose work spans democracy, liberty, and the ethics of markets. Peter is an associate teaching professor of business ethics whose research includes the ethics of compensating blood plasma donors. And Peter has a special place in Taboo Trade's history. He was our very first guest in season one, episode one. It's a pleasure to welcome him back alongside Jason to discuss a book that has helped define this field. Hey, guys, thanks for joining me today.
Joe Keys:Thanks for having us.
Kim Krawiec:So why don't we just start by having you introduce yourselves to our listeners? Joe, let's start with you.
Joe Keys:Sure. My name is Joe Keys. I'm a 3L here at UVA Law. I'm from Cary, North Carolina, and I'm very excited to be a part of this episode.
Jake Ross:And I'm Jake ross. I'm a 2L from Forest Lake, Minnesota, and I'm really looking forward to it.
Kim Krawiec:Jo, I don't think I knew you were from Cary. I used to live in Cary.
Joe Keys:Oh, no way.
Speaker E:Yeah.
Kim Krawiec:Yeah, yeah. All right, we'll discuss Carrie later. Yeah, it's definitely okay. For now, we are going to discuss our two guests for today and their book, Markets Without Limits. Both of you chose this specific episode to be the hosts of. So just tell me a little bit about what it was about this topic that appealed to you.
Peter Jaworski:Sure.
Joe Keys:When I saw the list of guests, it was a pretty easy decision for me. I studied philosophy in undergrad and then did a Master's in it at after that. So when I saw two prominent philosophers on the list, I sort of jumped at the opportunity. And I'd actually studied some of Professor Brennan's work when I was in grad school. And while I didn't necessarily agree with all of his arguments. I thought that he was very clear eyed in his thinking and very direct. And I also thought he was very intellectually honest in the sense that he was willing to follow the arguments where they led, even if it led to sometimes unpopular conclusions. So I'm really excited to be able to learn from him and Professor Jaworski today.
Speaker E:Right.
Kim Krawiec:And what about you, Jake?
Jake Ross:And I chose this, this particular interview for actually kind of a really random reason. When I was in college, I got really interested in the blood plasma market. I actually for about a year, spent a lot of time donating plasma. And so when I learned that Professor Jaworski had like a whole, a whole book and like a whole, a bunch of research about the plasma industry, even though that's not really what we're talking about today, I wanted to, I knew that these were the people I wanted to talk to.
Kim Krawiec:Well, if Peter finds out you have an interest in it, he's probably going to talk about it whether the rest of us want to or not because he's the world's leading expert in plasma markets. So I'm sure he'll be super excited to hear that you were already familiar with that. So let's talk next about what you hope to get from these guys today. I mean, this is unusual in that both of you are familiar with other work. Right. Than what we have today. In other words, Joe knows Jason's work prior and Jake knows Peter's work prior to this. So it makes it a little bit more interesting than a lot of the conversations we've had. Why don't we start with what we want to get from them? You guys have a lot of questions, as do your classmates. Jo, what is it that you're hoping to get out of the conversation today?
Joe Keys:Well, first of all, I'm really interested to see how they answer all the questions because they're pretty wide ranging and touch on a lot of different parts of the readings that we did. But more than that, I'm interested to see just how they approach answering these questions, how they sort of break the questions down and think through them because I think as philosophers that's what they're particularly good at. So I'm hoping to learn from them how to do that.
Kim Krawiec:Well, great. And what about you, Jake?
Jake Ross:I'm pretty much interested in seeing the same things. I think there's quite a few questions about how the philosophy in the article we read translates over to a real life context. I'm kind of interested to see when you stress test it in various ways, how it Ends up looking at the end. So I'm really excited for that.
Kim Krawiec:Yeah, I'm interested in all of that as well. I'm also interested in. Hopefully we'll have time for them to discuss any changes between the first and second edition of the book. You guys only read the second edition? I've actually read both. And so I did notice some changes in the first three chapters that we actually read in preparation for this podcast. But I'm hoping that we have a little bit of a chance to find out why they thought that it was time for a second edition and what they wanted to emphasize in the second edition over the first. So hopefully we can talk about that as well. Anything else from either one of you that you want to discuss before we join the rest of the group?
Joe Keys:I think I'm good. I'm excited to get this episode started.
Jake Ross:Yeah, same for me. I'm just really excited.
Kim Krawiec:Great. All right, let's join the others. Welcome, guys. Thanks for joining us today.
Jason Brennan:Yeah, thank you.
Peter Jaworski:Yeah, our pleasure. Yeah, thank you.
Kim Krawiec:And you know what? This is. This is kind of like a full circle moment for the podcast because Peter was the inaugural guest on the podcast. Talking about plasma. Talking about bloody well pay them.
Peter Jaworski:I still remember. Yes.
Kim Krawiec:Yeah. Yeah. So good to have you back. That was in the middle of COVID and who thought we'd still be going strong at this point.
Peter Jaworski:Yeah, I remember I had little plushies representing the different blood components.
Kim Krawiec:You had visual aids. I still remember it. Well, it's good to have you back. Good to have Jason here today. Before I turn it over to our hosts for today, which are Jake Ross and Joe Keys, I am just gonna invite you guys to talk a little bit about the main theme of the book. What prompted you to do it, why you felt a book like this was needed, and importantly, why you thought a second edition of the book was needed.
Jason Brennan:Yeah, I'll start with the second edition. You know, the main reason there's a second edition is because the editor at Routledge suggested we write a second ed sometimes. No more exciting than that. I mean, the book had a lot of uptake. Lots of people wrote responses, so there was an opportunity to respond to some of those responses. And, like, you know, some of these things were worth talking about, even if they were mistaken because we could clarify our thesis. Some of them had some good challenges that were worth overcoming. A lot of the new material wasn't actually new. It was like, we wrote, like, an extra 150 pages that didn't go into the first edition. And then we decided to use that. There's some things we even reserved because we thought, like, you know, maybe it doesn't need to go here, but someone will bring out this challenge. No one ever did. And we just decided to publish, like, our view on, say, blackmail. And for instance, as far as the book itself, it was just this interesting thing where we saw all of these books which are permitted to be sold about the question of what the limits of the markets are. Are there certain things that should and should not be for sale? And Peter and I just noticed that a weird thing where many of the times when people were complaining about what is being bought and sold, the fact that it was being bought and sold was incidental to their argument. It wasn't even about the money. You know, it would be like the metaphor we have in the book. Like, imagine people write a book called, like, the Limits of Hat Wearing. And they're like, you can't wear a hat while you're enslaving somebody. And you can't wear a hat while you're committing rape, and you can't wear a hat while you're committing murder. And everyone's like, hats are horrible. And you're just like, you're not even talking about the hat. And we noticed that, like, half of the things that people were putting in these books were like that. It's kind of silly and they didn't notice it, but that's what they were doing. But then we also found, like, there was this one challenge that would survive. The idea that, like, markets express depravity, profanity and so on, and that there's an inherent meaning to market exchange that's negative. And we thought that was. That was an interesting question, and we wanted to take that on. So after we wrote the paper that turned into the article in Ethics, an editor at Routledge suggests we turn it into entire book. And lo and behold, that's what we got. You know, so. But the basic thesis is really quite simple. It's. Money does not usually create evil where there was none. If you can do something and possess something for free, there's going to be some way to exchange it for money that is not morally wrong in some common interesting way, not some weird way. So then it turns out that most of the complaints that people have about commodification are actually complaints about something else. About the business ethics of a particular organization, about the possession of the thing in the first place, about the way it's being sold, not the fact that it's being sold. So in a sense, our book is Very deflationary. It's to say that this whole debate kind of rests on mistakes. For the most part, they're talking about something else. Most of the time, it's not a libertarian book or a classical liberal book. We don't make any views about how much the market should be regulated, what the role of the state is. We're not defending capitalism in any major way. We're just saying that this particular question has been dealt with incorrectly by others.
Peter Jaworski:Yeah, if I can add a little bit of color to that, too, because Jay covers it really well. But part of the reason why I wanted a second edition is because in the process of writing that book, and also for other reasons, I became really interested in plasma. So we now have like a chunk of the book dedicated to talking about plasma. And actually the issues in the book that we wrote that really moved me the most were the issues of kidneys, were the issues where we're trying to figure out ways to save more lives in the medical space. So here's a different way of thinking about our thesis. Our thesis is like, if you can do it for free, there's some way to do it for money. But a different kind of question that our book sort of answers is, is there a way to encourage the production of priceless goods using one of the best tools we have available to us, namely money? Right. That's like a different question. It's a different way of thinking about the sort of mission that we give ourselves in the book. But it's also really important because at least in the space of, like, medical kinds of contexts, we can save a lot more lives if we use this incredible tool. But people have all these objections to the use of this tool. And so Jay and I were trying to figure out, like, do these objections, do they stand, and are they powerful enough to keep us from using this tool to try to save more lives or to try to improve people's lives?
Kim Krawiec:I am going to turn it over to Joe and Jake, who are going to run the show from here. So take it away, guys.
Joe Keys:Hi, I'm Joe. Thank you guys for being here. We really appreciate it. My first question, we'll just dive right in is on the burden of proof. So in your opening, you emphasized the prosperity of the markets have created, and you've summed that up well by the quote you used from McCloskey. Once upon a time, we were all poor. Then capitalism flourished, and now, as a result, we're rich. But a richer society need not be a better one, at least from a moral perspective. For example, people may be wealthy, but exceptionally solipsistic and unloving. So one might reasonably think that this hypothetical world is worse than one where people tend to be of modest means but wonderfully kind and virtuous. So why should the burden fall on the critics to show what's morally wrong with a particular market rather than on its defenders to make a moral case for it?
Jason Brennan:I honestly think it's. The answer to this is really boring. It's their job to defend it because it's their job to defend it. If you're writing a paper saying that something is wrong for a particular reason, you bear the burden of proof because you're the one writing the paper. So a bunch of other people, independently of us, wrote books and papers arguing that certain markets are wrong. And they gave arguments for why they're wrong about, like, why this is the kind of thing that should not be for sale. Many of these books were widely read. Many of them are bestsellers. Some of the people in question will demand$50,000 to come give a speech about why something should not be for sale. You can probably guess who I'm talking about. I'm not making that number up, by the way. I know for a fact that's the number. So they have the burden of proof because it's their paper. And so what we can come back and say is, like, you've written these things. Your argument's not very good. It has holes and gaps. Here's what the fundamental flaw is, and here's the real challenge that you have. So in a sense, it's like they have the burden of proof because they started it. If we'd written the first book, like, if we had started it, we could say something like, you know, we have a burden. But in a sense, there is, like, a deeper philosophical way of thinking about this, which is, you know, some of you, I know someone here has, like, a philosophy background. There's this kind of question of what's called closure rules in ethics. And the question is, are things, generally speaking, wrong by default and have to be shown to be good and permissible, or are things presumed to be permissible by default and shown to be wrong? So I think the majority view is that the default view for most actions is that they are permissible unless there's something special about them that makes them wrong? So I do think that just in general, in philosophy, the assumption is if you're saying something is wrong, you bear the burden of proof. If you're like, it's probably permissible absent an objection that's just the starting point. So I think there's two independent reasons why they bear the burden of proof, and we are. We are coming back to them and saying, like, yeah, your. Your argument doesn't work. Here's why, and here's what you would have to do to make your argument succeed.
Peter Jaworski:Yeah, I agree with that. I mean, you might add something like, you know, people are going to do things and other people are going to want to interfere with the things that they want to do. And I think the burden might be on the people who want to interfere. If you want to tell me that I can't use this resource, that I have money or whatever else it is you want to step in and you want to say, oh, you can't use that over here, then maybe the burden is on you. The default is sort of, I'm free to do whatever I want, you're free to do whatever you want. As soon as you want to step in, then you got to tell me a story like, how come. How come I can't do what I want to do with the stuff that I happen to have? And you can have lots of really good reasons, but the burden, I think, in general, is on you. But this kind of burden that I just mentioned doesn't really matter because the book, the way that we've tried to write it, is we just accept the premises of the other side. So we're not suggesting that, like, the burden is in fact, on them, although I think maybe we do. Right. But. But it doesn't even matter because we just take whatever arguments, whatever moral point of view they happen to have, we try to accept that as much as possible. And then to show that even on those premises, the conclusion that, like, we need to stop people from exchanging things voluntarily or however you want to describe it, it doesn't follow from those premises.
Kim Krawiec:I understand that this is not the reason that you were suggesting that they had the burden, but I think Peter Singer has argued that, at least in the context of organs, that it's because the stakes are so high. Right. Because people are dying for lack of an intervention, that the moral burden is on the people who would prevent that intervention to argue that it overcomes the moral cost of deaths. Is that persuasive to you, or would
Peter Jaworski:you push back on that? I mean, I think that. Yeah, Kim, I think the answer is. I think the answer is yes. Yeah. I think, especially if we have good reason to believe, as I think we do, that the use of money would encourage people to donate kidneys more often. Or to donate plasma more often and so on. If the evidence suggests that, you know, using this tool would increase the number of people who would receive a kidney transplant and thereby save more lives, then the stakes are enormously high. And I think then, you know, the arguments that you want to raise against that need to meet that bar. They need to be similarly bad. One of the things, we'll talk about this, I'm sure, but one of the things that I find unusual about the corruption argument in particular is that they say, well, if we allow exchange of kidneys, then that'll corrupt, corrupt the way that we think about the human body or something like that. And I say, well, suppose that's true. And suppose that like it corrupts our attitudes by 5% or something like that, but like 10 people's lives are saved. It's like, how do we weigh the one against the other? It seems to me that like, even if you save just one life at the cost of like corrupting people by like 1% in some respect or something like that, it might be worth that exchange. So the argument on the other side needs to have a certain kind of like, it just needs to overcome the problem that, that like lives are good and we need to save as many as possible.
Jason Brennan:I'm glad Peter said that. Cause it's. A lot of this book is funny and comical and we do silly things inside of it, but it really is a high stakes book in a sense. And the reality is in the way bioethics works. And if some bioethicist sees this and thinks I'm being very critical of them, I completely mean to be critical of you guys, like, you gotta stop, like there's something wrong with you. People change and be better. What can I say? But there's a lot of stuff that happens in bioethics where it's like, this person's gonna die. And they're like, yeah, the bioethicist. Like, yeah, but it's icky. And they're like, okay, I guess we'll just let them die. And it's like, you know, I'm not saying, I'm not a consequentialist. I'm not saying like the consequences always determine everything. But man, you gotta make at least a complete argument, right? You need to really justify your opposition to this thing, especially when the stakes are that high. You know, like it's, it's almost like lazy writing and lazy argumentation.
Joe Keys:Thank you guys, that was really helpful. I'll pass it on to Jake, our other co host, to ask another question.
Jake Ross:Thank you so much. Actually, the last part of that answer provides a good segue into my question which focuses on the empirical evidence for the corruption argument. So when I was reading, my understanding of your response to the corruption objection is that it kind of leaves open the possibility that, like, if the people who are making that objection put in enough effort and really wanted to, like, build up their argument much more than they have so far, they maybe could marshal enough empirical evidence to show that some type of market or other really is corrupting if that evidence is actually out there. Of course, you seem pretty skeptical that any anti commodification critics have actually done that so far. But I guess I'm curious if, in your opinion, have any anti commodification critics ever made what you'd consider to be a genuine effort to produce the evidence that some market really is corrupting enough to make it morally wrong? I'm also curious if there's any types of market out there where you think maybe if the people making these anti commodification arguments put in enough time and effort, could they find some kind of good argument that the market's corrupting, or do you think it's just kind of empirically false? In all the relevant cases, I think
Peter Jaworski:many have tried to give good corruption arguments. Right. But you'll notice that across all of the people who Jay and I describe as anti commodification theorists, they repeatedly use similar kinds of cases. And the one that comes up over and over again is the Haifa Daycare center in Israel. For listeners who might not be familiar with this, the idea is that, you know, people kept showing up late to pick up their kids from the statecare center in Israel. And so a couple of economists, Yuri Izi is one of them, I forget the name of the second one, they suggested that they introduce a penalty, a fee, for people who are showing up late. And so they did. And here's what happened. It's a very surprising result is that actually more people showed up later than before. And then when they removed the fine, which is what it was, people kept showing up late. Okay? And this example appears over and over again. And the conclusion that Michael Sandel gives it, the way that he interprets this finding is he says, well, prior to the introduction of the find, people thought about this using a moral framework. They were like, well, how morally bad is it if I show up late? I'm taking up these people's times, I really ought to pick up my kids on time. Then when the money was introduced, then people switched from thinking about this in this moral way, to instead doing a kind of cost benefit analysis and sort of being like, oh, what is the price of my showing up late? And then they were like, oh, okay, well, I'm willing to pay the price. And so then I show up late. So that's the way Sandel describes the results of that empirical study. Now, Jay and I think that, like, actually the results can be explained in a much different way in that specific instance. Like, the way to describe it is like, oh, you know, before the fine was introduced, I thought that my showing up late was a really big deal. Like, oh, no, they. They. I'm really putting people out. But then they introduced the fine, and importantly, the fine was like a tiny sum of money. I don't remember what it was. It was like five bucks or something like that.
Kim Krawiec:So Jay and I are like that. It was like two bucks.
Peter Jaworski:That's crazy, right?
Kim Krawiec:People with children are like, please keep the kids for two bucks. You know, so.
Peter Jaworski:So prior to the introduction of the fine, people were like, this is a really big deal. But then the fine is like two bucks. And then that's like, new information. And I go, oh, I thought this was a really big deal, but it turns out they think it's not a big deal at all. So I'm not changing frames from a moral frame to, like, some kind of market frame or whatever. I'm still within the moral frame. I'm just adjusting. One of the premises in my argument for why I ought to pick up my kids on time, Namely, I thought it was a big deal. Now it turns out it's no big deal. And so I'm gonna show up late because they're telling me that they don't really care. It was like two bucks. And, oh, by the way, this is. This is a fun bit of trivia. We wrote the book back in, like, 2015, 2016. There was a podcast with Yuri Gneezy that came out, like, a year ago or two years ago. And Yuri Gnezy's own description of the empirical study that he did. I forget the name of the podcast was that actually it was the sum of money that made the difference, that if they had charged a much higher fine, people would not have shown up late. And this is like a separate piece. And then, Jay, you can go. But let me just add one other thing. There's a famous article in this space. It's about crowding out and corruption together. Just, like, pay enough or don't pay at all. So we get these, like, weird effects, like people showing up Late people donating less blood if you offer them five bucks than. Than compared to $0. Or like, people being unwilling to help you carry a couch into the apartment if you offer them $5. But, like, lots of people would be willing to do it if you offered them $0. Like, the thing is that, like, sometimes if you pay too little, then it changes things, but you got to just pay more, and then you get the effect that you want. Yeah, yeah.
Jason Brennan:On the broader question, too, about, like, the empirics, you know, if this is just, again, the journal burden of proof, you're making a claim that something corrupts something else. Like taking English class. Like, here's something. I believe taking English classes corrupt your ability to write, makes you a worse writer. If I want to prove that claim, I have to, like, go and collect the evidence for it. Like, because I'm the one that asserted it's corrupting, then I bear that burden. And of course, it's an empirical claim. So, of course, you can imagine the evidence coming in a particular way. It just turns out that this has been studied in great depth, and the evidence, generally speaking, goes the other way. Though what I'd like to say is I think a pretty fair assessment of it is something like this. When you have, at least among Westerners, really personal and close relationships that are not mediated by money, then bringing money into that relationship often creates estrangement because money is a tool that's used between strangers. So for us Westerners, bring, like, if I'm like, hey, Peter, I want to talk to you about a paper I'm writing. Could you give me some comments on it? What if I give you, like, a hundred bucks to read it? He'd be like, that's weird that Brennan's offering me $100 to read this paper. I thought we were friends, right? So it is true that, like, money has this estrangement communication, like, when you have it in between people who are close. But when you take strangers and you introduce money, money has, like, the opposite effect. It actually makes people much nicer to each other because money communicates. I want to trade with you on mutually beneficial terms. I'm taking your interest seriously. I'm not trying to use you, Right? So I think that's a pretty good summary of, like, the effects that you actually see in the literature. But even then, that whole thing about it, communicating estrangement is a thing that's not universal in the world. It's special to contemporary Westerners, given their particular view of money. But again, it's just like, As a matter of fact, the empirics just don't support the corruption objection. You know, you gotta make your argument. And they all, like, cite one or two cases that are really ambiguous and they ignore evidence. They. A particular person we've argued with at great length had an exchange with Herbert Gintis in the Boston Review about this, and Gintis was just like, dude, like, I, I'm the guy who set out to prove that you were right. And the. I did study after study after study, and they kept coming on the opposite direction. So I changed my mind. What is your response to all of that? And then like, he's just like, I don't know, I guess I'll read the studies. And then, like, three weeks later, he goes and gives a talk at Brown and. And, like, has no response to it. We don't know if he read the studies and thinks they're bunk or if he just knows his audience doesn't know better. So, yeah, of course it could turn out. New evidence comes in and we change our minds. That happens all the time. But I think the, the brunt of the, the weight of the evidence seems to be money creates estrangement between close people and creates closeness and trust between distant people.
Peter Jaworski:And by the way, just. Just as a caveat here, Jay's general point is exactly right. But the specific anecdote that he gave is incorrect. Because if Jay were to offer me a hundred bucks as between the two of us, it's like, I give Jay the middle finger all the time. Jay gives me the middle finger all the time. But that's because of our personal history. And like the personal. Because of this book, we give each other middle fingers, right? And it means something different as between the two of us. So if Jay were to offer me a hundred bucks to. To do. To give him comments on a paper that he's writing, I wouldn't see that as estrangement or like, creating distance at all. But that's unique as between the two of us. It would also be unique as between, like, a couple. And both of them are economics PhDs, let's say. Right? So the general point still stands, though, that, like, in general, money does communicate estrangement, as between people who are close with each other, but communicates something very different as between strangers.
Kim Krawiec:Peter, to go back to your point about Ganese's explanation on the podcast, I'm not surprised at all, because one of the things that annoys me about the use of that Israeli daycare study is it is in the original paper. The original paper has two possible explanations and the authors say they can't differentiate them. And one of them is the signaling effect of the money. And then in conversation, in communications with others, these come more and more towards, after subsequent studies have sort of confirmed that effect to say, yeah, I suspect that's the driver. So it doesn't surprise me. And the fact that there's an alternative explanation in the paper that these people never mention is just amazing to me.
Peter Jaworski:Yep, I agree.
Jake Ross:That's really interesting. All right, so the next couple questions deal with inherent objections to commodification versus, like, incidental objections. And I think the next person is Angelica.
Peter Jaworski:Jay, can I. And Angelica. Sorry, can I interrupt? Just to make it clear that like, yes, in principle, if people came up with good corruption objections, Jay and I would be like, yes, you've shown us that we are wrong. And that's, that's important to emphasize. Our thesis is falsifiable. It's just that up to this point, I don't think we've seen enough.
Jake Ross:Definitely. Yeah, that totally makes sense.
Speaker H:Yeah. Specifically, I was looking for more clarification, actually. So the distinction between inherent and incidental objections seems to do a lot of work in your argument. But when I look at how you treat exploitation, misallocation and semiotic Objections In Chapter 3, your examples of exploitation involve power imbalances, your examples of misallocation involve existing inequality, and your rebuttal to the organ sale case turns on a claim that our culture currently disregards the sanctity of life. So in each of these cases, background social conditions seem to be doing a lot of the work instead. So I guess my question is, is an inherent objection really a different kind of objection than an incidental one?
Jason Brennan:Yeah, it's a good question. You know, the, the word, like even the word choice can be like misleading in a way because we don't want to say something like inherent objections are more serious than incidental ones. Incidental objections could be very, very serious. And inherent ones can be very minor. But it really just has to do with the idea of the whole knob turning metaphor, you know, so inherent objections are like, it really is the what that's being sold. And incidental objections are. It's the how it's being sold. And what's happened in this literature over and over again is key. People are confusing the how with the what. You know, like Sandel's, like, if you paid someone to, like, Peter and I actually tried this when we wrote our book. We were trying to get people let us like, pay them to like, name Their children. No one would take us up on it. You know, like, we'll pay you 500 bucks if you name our your kid either Jason or Peter. And no one would do it, right? But Sandel is complaining. Like, what if somebody takes money and names their kid Pepsi Jones, right? Or PepsiCo Jones, I think was his example. And we're like, well, you know, are you complaining about the fact that somebody is naming someone for money, or are you complaining about the specific name? And it sounds like your objection is the name is humiliating. And then you're like, that's true. But that means, like, you really shouldn't Name your kid PepsiCo Jones for free either. Which I agree. I think that would be a stupid name. So that's really all the question is. We're asking, like, is this something like, you have an objection that this thing cannot be bought and sold any particular way at all, or is your objection to the particular way it's being sold or who's selling it? So, for instance, right now, I'm a guitarist. I think you probably saw my splash screen, had me playing guitar. There's a company called Fender, which is like, the biggest guitar manufacturer on earth. And I have, like, for Fender products, like, you know, a couple hundred feet in front of me in my other side of my house. Not a couple hundred feet. My house isn't that big. But anyways, like, right now, Fender has been acting like a total jerk and suing everybody over these really trivial things. And people are saying we should boycott Fender. So somebody said, like, fender guitars are not the kind of thing that should be bought and sold. We go, hold on. You're totally fine with buying and selling Stratocasters and Telecasters and, you know, deluxe reverb amplifiers? In principle, you're just saying these guys are acting like jerks right now. You shouldn't do business with them right now. Someone else could make the same product and it would be fine. You're not objecting to guitars, per se. You're objecting to this particular company. And so this is really just a clarifying device to some people. Right up front, we're asking, are you worried about the particular company selling it the particular way they're selling it, or are you really trying to say this is the kind of thing that should not be bought and sold? The other people, they started this debate. We're coming into it. We're the second people to come in. Like, they started the debate and they said, no, there are just certain things that should not be bought and sold, period. They're not the kind of thing that is permissible to sell. And then over and over when you
Peter Jaworski:go, no, you're just.
Jason Brennan:You're just complaining this company sucks, or you're complaining about this particular way of writing the contract. And we think with very simple tweaks, maybe with certain simple regulations, you can overcome all your objections to the market and it could be bought and sold. Right. So you haven't discharged your own argumentative burden, given what you set you. The critic said you were trying to do it turns out you didn't actually succeed in that. So the inherent, incidental thing is just to give them the categories they need to understand what mistake they're making. That's really all it's for.
Peter Jaworski:Yeah. Part of the mission in our book, too, is to leave a space for business ethics. Like, some of these complaints about the sale of things is not like, it's bad to buy and sell this thing in particular. Rather, there's, like, ways to do it that are bad. And business ethics is, like, about, like, here's a better way to buy and sell stuff. Here's. Here's a bad way to buy and sell stuff. And not all of those things are gonna be captured by the thought that, like, you shouldn't, or you should purchase this thing or another thing. Inherent just tells us that, like, it's the market. To go back to the analogy that Jay said at the opening of the podcast, consider the example of, like, you wanna write a book about the moral limits of wearing a hat. Well, you need to identify the kinds of cases where it's the hat that is the problem and not something else. That's all we mean by inherent. And in this context, I guess it's worth pointing out a different distinction that we do not make, which is the one between inherent and intrinsic. Right. So our complaint is like, the way the world is, the way that markets operate, the, you know, the. The cultural context within which they operate, that's all inherent to the market. But we're not saying that that's true in all possible worlds, which would be intrinsic.
Speaker H:Thank you so much for that clarification.
Jake Ross:You bet.
Peter Jaworski:Thanks so much for the question.
Joe Keys:Thanks. I'll go ahead and pass it over to Tyler now, who has a question along similar lines.
Speaker I:Thanks, Joe. I think my question is maybe a more specific case related to Angelica's. So you distinguish the wrongness of an activity from the wrongness that's introduced by a market and acknowledge that markets can make some bad actions worse. So, for example, in dog breeding, some people object to the actual act of breeding dogs, whether or not money changes hands, citing concerns such as animal welfare and the opportunity cost of breeding new dogs while shelter animals go unadopted. But some others object that the profit motive drives overbreeding puppy mills and treating animals as inventory. So here the objection locates the wrongness in the market, not in the act itself. So how do you separate those objections when the profit motive is what critics say produces the harm?
Jason Brennan:Yeah, I think those cases are, in a sense, simpler than people are letting on, because it's true. I mean, Peter and I teach classes on business ethics, and we talk at great length about how, you know, giving someone an incentive to do something can lead to bad effects. It can do it inside of markets, it can do outside of markets. People shouldn't do wrong things. And when you reward bad behavior, you tend to get more of it.
Kim Krawiec:Right.
Jason Brennan:And profit is one way of rewarding bad behavior. So if it's something that's bad to do, we don't want to reward doing that thing. Generally speaking, we can construct thought experiments in which rewarding people for bad behavior leads to less of it. And there's some interesting empirical questions about whether that actually obtains in the real world. But generally speaking, if something's bad, you don't want to reward people for doing it. Money can reward people for doing the bad thing. So we completely agree. It's like, if this is a bad thing for people to do, like, slavery is a horrible thing, and having markets in slavery makes it worse because now you're industrializing it and making there more of that particular thing. Child pornography is a horrible thing. Having markets in it leads to there being more of it. We shouldn't have it. But again, notice that it wasn't like we had this thing that was morally innocuous. It was totally fine. And then we introduced money, and suddenly it became bad. Like, no one says slavery is totally fine as long as it's gift giving. Like, if the king gives me a gift of a slave, that's fine. If I give you a slave for Christmas, that's fine. But if I sell you the slave, that's where evil happened. So the people that we're arguing against, they're. They're trying to identify cases where you have a morally innocuous activity, and the introduction of money in exchange transforms it from morally innocuous into morally wrong. And so one of the reasons why, because we really a good way of putting our book, is we're just like, these people are confused. Like, they're always talking about Something else. And this kind of objection is to say, you're right. Like, of course making profit off of evil is a bad thing. Not just because evil is bad, but because making profit off of evil leads to more evil. You're absolutely right about that. But it wasn't like the money transformed it into something bad that was otherwise good. And that's what you, the critic, are trying to talk about when you're saying certain things should not be commodified, period. You're, you're trying to talk about cases where money transforms something from innocuous to bad. Yeah.
Peter Jaworski:The point about treating dogs is inventory. So we'll agree that that's a bad way to think about dogs. That's a bad way to treat the dogs. I, I don't know. I mean, we have, we have for profit companies that have employees. And there's a difference between companies that treat their employees like, I don't know, like robots in a production line or something like that, and companies that treat their employees well. And I don't see the difference between that and the case of dog breeding. It's not as though the fact that profit is involved or that there's a market or something like that that leads people to treat dogs as inventory. You can imagine a dog breeder that got into the business of dog breeding precisely because they love dogs so much and they don't think of them as inventory. And they think it would be really nice if more people had more access to more of these companions, more of these, like, friends. So I don't think there's anything about markets that make people treat dogs like inventory. We should also, like, bear in mind that, like, you know, is it a treatment effect or a selection effect, like, who's going into these industries? And maybe, maybe one thing that could be done is, you know, licensing and education or something like that. And you do your best to weed out the people who have the wrong attitudes towards stocks that has nothing to do with the market. It's just like, some people are nice and they have the right views about how to treat dogs. Other people are not nice and they have the wrong attitudes about dogs. Right. So is there a way to sort of produce a market in dog breeding that results in the good without all of the really nasty bads? And I think the answer is clearly, clearly, yes. I'd love to see an argument to show that it's not possible to have decent dog breeders, that everyone who gets into the business of dog breeding ends up treating the dogs inventory. But, like, I don't Know, that seems to me like a kind of hypothesis that I. I just don't believe.
Jason Brennan:Yeah, and I want to add to that too. I mean, I haven't researched dog breeding at great length, though I do have a dog. I bought it from a breeder for a lot of money. I did not rescue a dog. I've never rescued a dog. But take like, actually, like, the question of, like, what about in people treating people's inventory? I used to teach a class on nonprofit management at Georgetown, and there's a surprising literature on. Nonprofits have a strong tendency to treat their people worse than for profits. They actually exploit the altruistic intention. So there's this thing where for profits are very much like, we understand this is an instrumental relationship. We try to make it feel kind of family like. But at the end of the day, if we're asking you to do some work, we have to pay you. And nonprofits have a tendency to do things like, we're going to underpay you compared to the market and then we're going to overwork you because we have this noble mission. Shouldn't you just do more because it's noble? And there's this really high rate of like, employee burnout and mistreatment among. There's an entire empirical literature on this about employee burnout and mistreatment inside of nonprofits, precisely because the profit motive is not there. So that's the interesting thing about money. It's like, it's not this univocal thing where it always corrupts, it always makes things better. It's really very contextual.
Speaker I:Thank you.
Speaker J:Appreciate it.
Jake Ross:Thanks for that answer. So now I'm going to turn it over to Liz with a question about unequal access.
Speaker E:Thanks, Jake. Hi, guys. So under your list of objections to commodification in chapter three, you listed misallocation as one. I'm interested to know your response to this objection. It seems like this kind of objection can be made against many markets, not only taboo ones. For example, wealthier parents can buy their children's way into top universities by paying for tutoring and test prep, while lower income families don't have access to this. How do you respond to the misallocation objection when it arises in ordinary markets like these? Is inequality simply an unfortunate byproduct of markets that we just have to accept?
Jason Brennan:I would say, like, you know, the book is separating the issue of the morality of market exchange from the question of distributive justice. You'd say like, a good or a service could be sold, even like when the background of distribution of income makes things unfair. So there might be questions of like, should the government step in and remedy certain kinds of things? Should, like we're basically neutral and all that stuff. Like we don't take a stance on it. So, you know, I guess that's the best way of putting it. It's like there's these interesting questions about like, should there be more egalitarian distribution of income, more egalitarian distribution of wealth, et cetera, et cetera. And our book is kind of like not taking a stance on that.
Peter Jaworski:No.
Jason Brennan:So I guess like, I guess like this is putting like the question of markets allocate by willingness and ability to pay is not the same claim as justice requires us to leave ability to pay unequal. You know, and maybe another point is like, you know, poor, like food's a good analogy here. Like poor people lack purchasing power. We don't infer, therefore food should not be sold. We do things like food stamps, public provision of food and so on. So I think with many times when people are talking about these problems, it's like, should we have to just fix that problem directly? And even then, like take like university admissions. Certain universities make a public announcement and they go, we are going to only admit people on the basis of merit. And then none of them do that, right? They all lie. Like every, like, if you, any university you want to go to has in common the fact that its admissions people are liars, like I'm getting in trouble with them and the bioethicist now, then none of them actually stick to that. They all like buy and sell admission based upon like prestige networking, you know, how much your, your family has donated to the particular school and so on, right? So it's like this university has done something corrupt because you've made an announcement about what your values are and your VI and you violated those values. But that doesn't mean even then, like universities couldn't buy and sell access. You could imagine a university that's like, we've hired the best teachers in the world. We are so confident in our teachers. We don't think the quality of the students matters because our teachers are so good, we can take any student and make them brilliant. And the way we're going to allocate who gets to go to our school is not merit because we don't need to be selective. Like, you know, Harvard's teachers suck, so they have to be selective to help people. But where our teachers are good, so we're able to help anyone. We're just Going to be, like, the first few people, 50 people who sign up, you know, and they pay, or, you know, we found out there's a massive shortage. We can only take, like, a certain number of people. So we're going to do it on the basis of willingness to pay. I don't think there's anything evil about that. So it'd be evil if Harvard did it, because Harvard would be violating its word. That's what makes Harvard corrupt. They said they weren't going to do it, and they did it anyway. But if a company has, like, a different set of values and they're offering on the basis of bidding, that's not a problem. So I think sometimes with these things, it's like you're still pointing to the particular organization and saying you should not be allocating things this way given your professed values. But that doesn't mean someone else could have a different. Couldn't have a different set of values
Peter Jaworski:and do it a different way. Yeah. A different way of putting it, too, is that many of the problems that you identify, but correct me if I'm wrong, are problems of, like, unfair access or unequal access to subgood. The problem isn't that there's, like, a market in tutoring. Like, there's nothing. There's nothing the matter with people offering tutoring services. Maybe some of you tutor some of your friends or something like that and do it for money. There's nothing the matter with that. But some people don't have access to that tutoring. And then it turns out that they can't get into schools like uva, Right? Like prestigious schools like that. Well, okay, there's ways to fix unfair access and unequal access that don't involve, like, prohibiting tutoring or, like, private tutoring. The way to, like, fix it. Jay already said it. In the case of food, we go, here's some food stamps, right? Like, the problem with the fact that some people can't get access to food isn't that people isn't that there are grocery stores that charge prices for, like, bananas and carrots and cookies or whatever. That's not the problem. The problem is that some people don't have enough money to be able to access those carrots, bananas, some cookies or whatever, right? So the way you fix that is you go, here's some money. Now maybe we subsidize people, right?
Kim Krawiec:We.
Peter Jaworski:We do it with food stamps. We can do that on the tutoring front, too. And many different countries have these things. You know, they. They still have a market in teachers. So like they offer a job and they pay people to do this. They have a market in like tuition or whatever, but then they also have, you know, they're like, they subsidize your ability to attend the school when you're, when you're a little kid or when you're even a bigger kid. Right. It doesn't mean that like we can't have the market. There's a better solution. If the problem is unequal access or unfair access, then, you know, beef up the welfare side of this. Right? Beef up the subsidy.
Jason Brennan:And it's worth noticing too that if you imagine you magically eliminated these markets, the thing would still happen, the inequality would still happen, but it'd be distributed on the basis of networking. Like I happen to have a friend who's a math teacher and I asked them as a friend to like give my kid extra tutoring and they do it as like a favorite. You would still have inequality. So if you have a really strict egalitarian view, you're going to be complaining about lots of different behaviors and markets will just be one of them. I mean, you see those things like there are egalitarians who write honest articles that are like, I'm not sure if I should read to my kids, given my own professed values. It's not clear I'm allowed to read to them. And then the person I have in question, he was like, I think that's like a reductive of my view. It can't be that strong.
Peter Jaworski:Right?
Jason Brennan:But it's again, the market is not introducing badness where there wasn't any. From that the point of view of that philosophy, it's just a particular way that the badness of inequality takes place. It would also be distributed on the basis of looks, networking, charisma and other stuff that I think is corrupt.
Kim Krawiec:I just wanted to follow up on Liz's question. Do most of the anti commodificationists worry as much about misallocation in non taboo markets as in taboo ones or no? And I guess if the answer is no, do they put forward an argument? I mean, I know that there are, there are arguments for why misallocation might matter more in the case of taboo markets, but I'm not sure that all of the anti commodificationists actually carry that burden of making that argument. And I can think of some that I think have tried.
Peter Jaworski:I think that's right. Yeah. I haven't really done a history of the argument about the moral limits of markets, but I think it's roughly right to Say that a great deal of the focus originally was on taboo markets, on repugnant markets, on things that you can't buy and sell because those things are sacred or special or whatever, et cetera. But I think over time, like after Jay and I wrote this book and a few other people, yourself, Al Roth, a couple of others have contributed to this debate. I think it's shifting pretty significantly. And some of these other issues are taking more of the center stage. Something like misallocation of non tabular or non sacred goods or something like that. Yeah. And the thing that I wanted to add in answer to Liz's question was we should always ask compared to what? Because it's not really hard to kind of complain about every institution or every real world thing by comparing it to some ideal, Right. Jay has a really nice fallacy name for this, right? Let's all let him talk about that in a second. But you can't compare the market to some ideal that you've come up with in your head, Right. You've got to compare it to the real world kinds of institutions that would be the substitute for the market. And as Jay pointed out in his answer to your question, Liz, it's like these other ways of allocating goods, they come with their own special kinds of inequality, like it is. Jay pointed to networking as the way. You know, I was born in Poland, and in Poland, like you had to be a member of the political party to be able to go to like the special grocery store. And if you were like not just a member, but like some important person, whatever, there's like, we just get these. In many cases we get this alternative not based on the ability to pay, but based on your ability to network. Not based on your ability to pay or your ability to network, but like based on your family history or your family last name or something like that. So you substitute like one thing for another. So we always have to do this comparison to see whether or not we can get in. I guess in this context it would be like an ideally egalitarian society. But you've got to look at the real world and do the comparison. Jay, I've left the fallacy open to you if you want to discuss it.
Jason Brennan:I mean, it's called the Nirvana fallacy, but I just in one book call it the Cohen fallacy to be mean to Jerry Cohen, because he based his career on it accidentally so. But we don't need to get into why.
Joe Keys:Thank you. I'll go ahead and pass it to Mia, who has a question on discretion and the Importance of that in your argument.
Speaker E:Hi, y'.
Kim Krawiec:All.
Speaker K:Yeah, I was just curious sort about Yalls view on the role that discretion plays in conditional offers. So in chapter two, you say that Professor Jaworski can't condition saving the drowning baby on getting paid because saving the baby is obligatory. He has no discretion, so there's nothing to sell. But suppose a scenario where I do have discretion in this hypothetical, I must rescue one of two people, can save only one, and may otherwise choose either. So no one's like my mom or my dad or a drowning baby. I'll rescue someone even if nobody pays. And accepting an offered reward would cause no delay in that scenario. Can payment determine who I rescue? What must be within my discretion before I can make a particular action conditional on payment?
Peter Jaworski:Oh, what a great question, Mia. Thank you for that, Jay. If you don't mind, I'll say a few words and then you can chime in. Just a bit of background on this objection. This comes from Mark Wells. He wrote this, I think, really great article that showed that our original thesis. If you can do it for free, you can do it for money. False prey to the set of things that it is obligatory for me to do. So if you think of, like, a market as a conditional thing, you know, quid pro quo, I'll do this if you give me that. Well, there's a set of things where, like, I gotta do it. And so I can't say I won't do it unless you give me this in return, right? So the thesis now is like, if you can do it for free and it's within your discretion, right, Then. Then you can do it for money. And by the way, the set of those things is massive. Like, we think that, like, the case of, like, having this kind of obligation is gonna be the rare case. And now you're hooking onto that rare case and you've got a really nice. This thought experiment here. And I guess I. I want to ask you this. Like, suppose that you want to be a lifeguard, or you are a lifeguard, you have training or whatever, and you're choosing between two different, like, places to work. And at the one place there would be like, these two people or something who you'll save from drowning. And at the other place there will be these two other people who you will save by drowning. Suppose you know this ahead of time. And now it's like, though one place is offering you 15 bucks an hour to work there, the other place is offering you $16 per hour to work there. It seems to Me, like, you can be like, I'm going to go work at the place that pays me $16 per hour, but then you'll end up saving those two people rather than these two other people. Right. And I think that kind of answers your question. It seems to me that like as between two people and every consideration has been exhausted for why you should save one rather than the other. And it turns out that it's even Steven, then the fact that the one person is like, holds up a dollar. That might be. Yeah, I think that might be a reason.
Jason Brennan:And even then I'd add, like, saying that you can do it for money is not the same thing as saying you can refuse to do it not for money.
Joe Keys:Right.
Jason Brennan:So you can still take the payment. So. And we do that all the time. There are things like, like I got a teaching award at Georgetown. And I'm not bragging about that because honestly, I feel like, I feel like I half ass my teaching and other people quarter they're teaching. And so I don't think I'm like an exemplar. I think I'm falling derelict in my teaching duties. And then other people are doing worse. And by comparison I get like a stupid award.
Kim Krawiec:I can just testify from firsthand experience that Peter is not quarter assing or whatever you say.
Jason Brennan:That's true. No, Peter.
Kim Krawiec:Peter's a great teacher.
Jason Brennan:Yeah, Peter. Peter is an exemplary teacher. That's right. And he should be winning awards too. But it's all political bullshit. So anyways. But nevertheless, they gave me like a $10,000 bonus for this kind of thing.
Jake Ross:Right.
Jason Brennan:So I, in a sense, I got paid for doing what I should do. Like I should come up with better teaching methods. And I got paid extra for doing it as a kind of reward for coming up with something they thought was cool. That would be different from me saying, like, I'm not going to bother come up with any good teaching methods unless you pay me even more because maybe I have an obligation to already do that, but I can get a payment after the fact. So even with like the case, like, there is this interesting question, like, can you, in that moment, you've got two people and they start bidding on, like, who you save, and then you decide to go with the highest bidder. Maybe there's an objection to you deciding on that basis. But then after you save somebody, if everyone's like, we're so happy you save people, like, you don't have to pay taxes for the rest of your life and you get free hamburgers at McDonald's whenever you want. They are, in a sense, paying you for your good behavior. Which behavior? That might have been obligatory. We do that all the time. Like, we actually thank people all the time for obligatory behavior. Like, thanks mom for being a good mom. Like, you know, we have Mother's Day. Even though, like, you're supposed to be a good mother. Right. We still. I still say thank you to my mom on Mother's Day. My kids still say thank you to me on Father's Day. I still say thank you to my wife on our anniversary and that kind of stuff. So you can still structure a payment even though there's a. Which is separate from the question of can you make the choice itself conditional upon the highest bidder.
Peter Jaworski:Yeah, I have to chime in and just say that Jay does not have ass. Is teaching. And I think Jay says what he says sometimes for the sake of the comedy and the humor. And I think that was comedic and it was humorous. But having seen, like, the amount of thought that Jay puts into even the, like, meta questions about which bucket does this kind of teaching fall into? People don't really do that. Maybe, maybe because it's easier for Jay to do or think about teaching in those ways. He discusses it in that way. But, like, there's an enormous amount of work that Jay puts into his teaching. He totally deserved the Cross Georgetown University Teaching Award. He probably deserves it every other year. And he's a terrific teacher. Thanks, Peter.
Joe Keys:Thank you, guys. I wanted to jump in and ask a follow up question on that because I find it really interesting in the.
Peter Jaworski:About Jay's teaching. A follow up question about how good of a teacher he is.
Joe Keys:Okay. The putting it in terms of the lifeguards is interesting, but going back to Mia's original hypothetical, it seems like if there are two people drowning and somehow they could negotiate a price on who to save, that they would both, given that their life is at stake, they would both offer everything they have, quite literally. And so it seems like the only way you would make that decision is based on some background inequality. And so that seems to be problematic that the rich person in this scenario would always be the one who is saved. Given that you might think life shouldn't be determined on how much wealth you have. So does that enter your consideration? And how would that affect whether you think a market in this sort of thing could exist?
Peter Jaworski:I will report that. Like, I feel the pressure of this. Yeah. But we've stipulated that all other considerations have been taken account of. There's nothing else. Right. There's no Other basis for choosing the one person over the other. So then what we're comparing the situation to is something like, am I thereby morally obligated to flip a coin and like do it by chance? Or can I condition it in this way when it's within my discretion? Right. So that, that would be. And it still seems to me like you're not really obligated to flip a coin. In that case, you can then go ahead and use the money as the thing that decides because nothing else, nothing else will help you decide. Jay, do you think something different?
Jason Brennan:Yeah, I'm thinking about this because I also agree, like it feels weird in the moment to take the bid. On the other hand, if there were. And it's something else, I think about the difference between the case of you're walking down the street and you see two people drowning versus imagine a company called Save Lives Co or something and they just have boats going around looking for people who are drowning and their aunt's constantly taking bids. There's something about having the industrialization of it where you are purposely putting yourself out there and like creating your. The fact that you're getting reward is the thing that's like saving lives in mass versus like a one time, one shot thing. But then we have all these other cases that are the same thing but are invisible. Like Peter brought up the lifeguard case. Like the better lifeguards go to places that pay more. There's stuff like that right now when I. I'll just use myself. When I was 20 and 21, I had a really crappy car that had like a horrible safety rating and went like 0 to 60 eventually. And now I have like a car that has a five star safety rating. And my kids, like when my son first drove, I got him like a car that was like the highest safety rating car in its like segment and so on. So I have access to way more safety now than I did when I was younger. Am I more valuable now than I was younger? Probably not. I just have more money now than I was younger. That's the reason why already when you look around the world, safety is allocated on the basis of money, right? Where are you? Like, I live in a much safer environment now than I did when I was 20. Money people, like when I, when I travel, you know, I get like ransom insurance and stuff comes with me and things like that. And evacuation insurance. Why money? So we already are allocating safety and these kinds of considerations in a rather invisible way on the basis of this thing. So I would say if you Think that the. I'm not sure if this actually works, but I would say like an interesting paper would be something like this. If you think it's okay that like rich people get to have five star safety rated cars and poor people can have like a three star car. If you think it's okay that like richer people can live in safer neighborhoods than poorer people. Well, like, I don't, I don't know if I really think that, by the way, but, but nevertheless, if you think like all these other things are okay, what about this one case? When you're making a decision there. Is there actually any difference between those cases? Because there seems like they're somewhat similar, in which case you'd have the same judgment about each, but then we'd have to make radical revisions about a lot of these things. And actually on the crime thing, I, I actually do think, like, the fact that poor people are exposed to more crime than rich people is a problem. I don't think it's a problem with the market. I think it's a problem with the state. Like, I think it genuinely calls into consideration the legitimacy of the state that like, that happens. I don't think it's a problem with the fact that people are paying for safety. Of course they're going to pay for safety if they can. But I think it calls into question, like if the state's doing its job. But that doesn't, that doesn't tell us about these other cases. So, yeah, it's a good question.
Jake Ross:That's interesting. All right, our last two questions deal with real world uncertainty and the role of law. So I'm going to turn it over to Virginia.
Kim Krawiec:Sorry, Virginia, before you start, can we ask both of the questions first and then get your answers? So Virginia and then Kate, and then we'll get a response from Peter and Jason.
Speaker L:Thanks so much for being here. I kind of want to ask about what this moral argument leaves for lawmakers. You distinguish moral permissibility from legal permission, but the objections that you categorize are often echoed in legalization debates like organ markets and sex work, where the question on the table isn't whether an individual acts wrongly, but whether the state should be permitting the practice at all. And even though you favor regulation, considerations that go to whether a rule is administrable or enforceable or even worth writing don't obviously belong in any of the categories that are detailed in the book. So once this permissibility question is settled in your favor, what work is left for the state to be doing here? And could Those considerations justify legal restrictions that your permissibility argument doesn't settle. And in the end, how far should this argument take us in debates about legalization?
Speaker J:My question goes to a little bit about the practicality and uncertainty with some of these markets. So markets exist to induce some sort of action on behalf of its participants, but are there instances in which society is sufficiently uncertain of the potential harms that a market would introduce that we might want to prohibit a market while nonetheless permitting the underlying action as a matter of personal choice? For example, we might want to encourage organ donation while also recognizing that organ markets may change what type of person donates, how many people donate, under what conditions, and depending on the market design who receives them. Are there instances in which we should proceed with caution and not actively induce the activity without going so far as to prohibit the activity?
Peter Jaworski:Wow. I'll say a few words, Jay, and then you. You respond. So to Virginia's question. And maybe, actually this partly helps to answer Kate's question too. Our book is about permissibility. That's essentially what it's about. Our book is an effort to put philosophers out of the business of writing about the moral limits of markets. Like, we are trying to say, here's what you can do from your armchair, okay? Ta da. The end. Now the remainder of all of this is like, okay, well, we've solved it, right? This is all that the philosophers can do. Now it's time for social scientists to go out there in the world, find the empirical facts, and discover when in fact we should allow the permissible and when in fact we shouldn't allow what we will grant is permissible. Yeah, yeah.
Jason Brennan:I think it's a great way to put it. It's like, should we allow, like, legalize a market in something? You know, I'm very much an experimentalist about these things. Like, do something on a small scale, see what happens. Scale up if it works, tweak if it doesn't work, or get rid of it. You know, so the question of whether something should be legal is different from the question of whether it's permissible. Like, you know, I think. I think it's probably permissible to have Gen Ed classes, but they probably should be illegal at this point because universities are too corrupt to do it correctly. That's a crazy view that I have. So, you know, there might be. There might be cases like that. So the question of, like, the optimal regulation, like, for something has to do with, given the values that are at stake, what sorts of laws would actually.
Joe Keys:What would.
Jason Brennan:What laws can we write, how would people actually react to those laws? How would they game the system, whether it be rent seeking, would they comply with them or engage in malicious non compliance or gaming or things like that, or avoidance strategies? Will the power that we create with the goal of regulating this then be captured by the very people trying to regulate, to use, to fight their competitors and so on? These are all really complicated questions. And then that gives you an account of like what you think the optimal set of regulations are. And so for that reason, there might be cases where you might even have things where it's like, this is not permissible to buy and sell at all. It's not going to be permissible to have, but you still let it happen because it turns out attempts to control it or regulate it just utterly fail. And there might be cases where things are permissible, but you, you regulate them pretty heavily and there might be cases where it ends up being pretty laissez faire. So I think a good lawmaker, what should you do about this? Read the book, Understand that a lot of philosophers objections are mistaken, understand that the things that sounded good were actually complaints about something else. Pay attention to those other things and then learn good institutional economics and write good law, which is not pretty low bar because most people who are writing law, they don't do that stuff. They just do what sounds good rather than what actually works. So if you can really focus on the question of which laws work and actually produce the results you want to, then you are already at the top of the game.
Peter Jaworski:Yeah. And part of what Jay just said is a really clear, I think, a nice answer to your question too, Kate. So you already said it, but we can phrase it in the language that you used in your question. You asked about like what, what about markets under uncertainty? Like we don't know who's going to participate, we don't know what's going to happen. Right. What do we do in those cases? Jay is highlighting or pointing out the fact that there's uncertainty with respect to the rules, the regulations, the laws that we might pass two and we need to give both of those. We can't just go, hey, I'm uncertain about what this market will do. Therefore we're going to pass some ideal law that's going to result in everything that we want and none of the bad things. Right. That's not the right comparison. We've got uncertainties all over the place. There's uncertainties about what will happen with the market, but we also have uncertainties with respect to whatever rules we come up with in order to try to stop the bad and promote the good. So that. That doesn't answer the question as to whether in some specific instance we should introduce a prohibition, as Jay just said. Right. But it does highlight the fact that you can't compare markets to some ideal thing you gotta do, you know, second best stuff all over the place. You gotta be like, well, we live in a world of second best. We don't know the answer and we gotta compare realistic to realistic. Yeah, sometimes, by the way, Kate, that's gonna. I think that's gonna point to. I don't know in which instances, but sometimes I guess, like AI is a really good instance. Maybe it will point in the direction of. What do they call it, Pacing the frontier or whatever. Right. Which is in a way a kind of prohibition. Right. Although, by the way, just as a footnote, the guy in charge of the United States is like, all the companies are like, guys put some handcuffs on us, like to pace the frontier. And the guy in charge is like, no double down, no pacing. Let's go all the way to the frontier, the whole. The whole way. Right. But at any rate, we've got to compare second best to second best. And there's uncertainties on all sides.
Speaker J:Thank you.
Jason Brennan:Even on the point about regulation too, I think, because you brought this up, there's this question about optimal regulation. And sometimes it deals with the question about will you actually get the chance to be the one that regulates it? You know, so you could have an example of California keeps. Companies would rather do business in California and they ratchet up their environmental protection so much that the companies leave and go to China and then have. Are subject to much lower things. And there's even more pollution. The pollution just doesn't happen here, it happens over there. So that's like the kind of thing you have to take into consideration when you're thinking about a regulation. How will people actually respond?
Jake Ross:Right.
Jason Brennan:And then what produces the world that. What sets of rules produce the world you want, given how people are, you know, that's the hardest question. There's a weird thing I should maybe share on this point. Like, philosophers think that ideal theory is where the action is. And ideal theory is like arithmetic and non ideal theory about, like making good rules for real people is like multivariable calculus. And for some reason in our field that's like less prestigious. Even though it's way harder. It's not weird. But that's just a problem with our field. That's not a problem with the thinking.
Kim Krawiec:Thanks for doing this, you guys. This has been a lot of fun.
Peter Jaworski:Our pleasure. Thanks for having me. What a set of really great questions too, by the way.
Kim Krawiec:Yeah, they're really good. They're working hard this year. Jake, Joe, do you guys want to say any last minute things?
Joe Keys:Thank you guys so much for being on. I've learned a lot from you guys on this talk. And Professor Brennan, I can say I've learned a lot from your papers on Apistocracy and other contexts. And Professor Jaworski, I'm gonna read up on your plasma stuff. So thank you guys for being here.
Jake Ross:Yeah, thank you so much.
Peter Jaworski:Thanks, Jeff.
Jake Ross:Yeah, I need to read up on Professor Brennan's stuff, but I've learned a lot.
Peter Jaworski:Nah, don't bother. Stick with the plasma, Jake. Stick with plan asbest.
Jason Brennan:Peter will pay you to read his stuff instead of.
Peter Jaworski:Yeah, that's right.
Speaker E:Great.
Kim Krawiec:Thanks a lot, guys.
Peter Jaworski:Thank you.
