What isn't for sale?

Market thinking so permeates our lives that we barely notice it anymore. A leading philosopher sums up the hidden costs of a price-tag society.

There are some things money can’t buy—but these days, not many. Almost everything is up for sale. For example:

• A prison-cell upgrade: $90 a night. In Santa Ana, California, and some other cities, nonviolent offenders can pay for a clean, quiet jail cell, without any non-paying prisoners to disturb them.
• The services of an Indian surrogate mother: $8,000. Western couples seeking surrogates increasingly outsource the job to India, and the price is less than one-third the going rate in the United States.

Not everyone can afford to buy these things. But today there are lots of new ways to make money. If you need to earn some extra cash, here are some novel possibilities:

• Sell space on your forehead to display commercial advertising: $10,000. A single mother in Utah who needed money for her son’s education was paid $10,000 by an online casino to install a permanent tattoo of the casino’s Web address on her forehead. Temporary tattoo ads earn less.
• Serve as a human guinea pig in a drug-safety trial for a pharmaceutical company: $7,500. The pay can be higher or lower, depending on the invasiveness of the procedure used to test the drug’s effect and the discomfort involved.

 We live in a time when almost everything can be bought and sold. Over the past three decades, markets—and market values—have come to govern our lives as never before. We did not arrive at this condition through any deliberate choice. It is almost as if it came upon us.

As the Cold War ended, markets and market thinking enjoyed unrivaled prestige, and understandably so. No other mechanism for organizing the production and distribution of goods had proved as successful at generating affluence and prosperity. And yet even as growing numbers of countries around the world embraced market mechanisms in the operation of their economies, something else was happening. Market values were coming to play a greater and greater role in social life. Economics was becoming an imperial domain. Today, the logic of buying and selling no longer applies to material goods alone. It increasingly governs the whole of life.

The years leading up to the financial crisis of 2008 were a heady time of market faith and deregulation—an era of market triumphalism. The era began in the early 1980s, when Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher proclaimed their conviction that markets, not government, held the key to prosperity and freedom. And it continued into the 1990s with the market-friendly liberalism of Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, who moderated but consolidated the faith that markets are the primary means for achieving the public good.

Today, that faith is in question.

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The great missing debate in contemporary politics is about the role and reach of markets. Do we want a market economy, or a market society? What role should markets play in public life and personal relations? How can we decide which goods should be bought and sold, and which should be governed by nonmarket values? Where should money’s writ not run?

Even if you agree that we need to grapple with big questions about the morality of markets, you might doubt that our public discourse is up to the task. It’s a legitimate worry. At a time when political argument consists mainly of shouting matches on cable television, partisan vitriol on talk radio, and ideological food fights on the floor of Congress, it’s hard to imagine a reasoned public debate about such controversial moral questions as the right way to value procreation, children, education, health, the environment, citizenship, and other goods. I believe such a debate is possible, but only if we are willing to broaden the terms of our public discourse and grapple more explicitly with competing notions of the good life.

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This nonjudgmental stance toward values lies at the heart of market reasoning, and explains much of its appeal. But our reluctance to engage in moral and spiritual argument, together with our embrace of markets, has exacted a heavy price: it has drained public discourse of moral and civic energy, and contributed to the technocratic, managerial politics afflicting many societies today.

A debate about the moral limits of markets would enable us to decide, as a society, where markets serve the public good and where they do not belong. Thinking through the appropriate place of markets requires that we reason together, in public, about the right way to value the social goods we prize. It would be folly to expect that a more morally robust public discourse, even at its best, would lead to agreement on every contested question. But it would make for a healthier public life. And it would make us more aware of the price we pay for living in a society where everything is up for sale.

Michael J Sandel in the Atlantic. Here 

A tale of IPL India and BPL India..!

The capital witnessed a bizarre spectacle earlier this week - the lavish wedding of the children of two Delhi politicians on which an estimated Rs 250 crore was spent. A five-seater helicopter worth Rs 35 crore was gifted by the bride's father to the groom. Instead of indignation, the event generated nothing more than gasps of disbelief among the chatterati.

The groom's father and Congress leader, Kanwar Singh Tanwar, and the bride's father, former- MLA Sukhbir Singh Jaunpuria, might deny these estimates should the income tax authorities dare to question them. And, who knows, this expense might indeed be from well- earned and tax- paid income.

However, the Tanwars and the Jaunpurias are not alone. Society pages of newspapers tell us that the Indian wedding has not only become fatter over time but that families buy space in newspapers to show-off their the wedding and guests. Mere consumption is no longer enough, it also has to be conspicuous.

How much will the political elite, made up of a few hundred families, agree to forgo to prevent the delegitimation of its immense power? Might not the ordinary citizen begin to question the legitimacy of the system of governance which catapults such people to the top? It is not just the question of an A Raja or a Suresh Kalmadi. Corruption scandals have marred almost every government that came into power since the mid- 1980s.

There is a nexus between the worst elements - criminals, cheats, land grabbers and contractors who milk public funds - and politicians which is very difficult to break.

This is what makes one wonder that while the Indian economy may indeed return to nine per cent growth from this year on, might it not bring social and political problems which this society shows no sign of tackling? Will it be able to digest a high economic growth that comes with social unrest? Growth is necessary because the alternative is the socialism of poverty which does no one any good. But without an ethical basis, economic growth can aggravate inequity to unmanageable proportions. Economic growth and its concomitant increase in income and consumption ideally ought to have a moral and ethical underpinning. This is particularly important in a society where wealth distribution is skewed and inequalities abound.

The economic distance that already exists between " IPL India and BPL India" ( to use Sitaram Yechury's memorable phrase) can eventually result in the political alienation of large sections of society. Those who are heard declaring that an Egypt will never happen in India because of the safety valve provided by our functioning democracy may not be able to delude themselves for long. It may not take more than a decade for India to become a dysfunctional society. The result of mal- governance is already visible in the Maoist affected areas of the country. The question is whether its spread can be tackled amicably and whether our political elite are capable of this.

Bharat Bhushan in India Today. More Here. 

The groom wore a garland made of bank notes and received a helicopter as a gift, there were 18,000 guests - or perhaps it was 30,000 - and 1,000 workers took 40 days to prepare the venue.

The exact details have been fiercely disputed, but Thursday's newspapers in New Delhi were all in agreement that this had been one very big, very fat Indian wedding.

Lalit Tanwar married his bride Yogita Jaunapuria at a family farmhouse near the city in a ceremony Tuesday celebrated with 100 dishes, 12 giant TV screens to broadcast proceedings, and even a gift of $5,500 for the groom's barber.

The Times of India calculated the cost of the extravaganza uniting two influential political families at Rs1billion ($22 million), while the Mail Today went for the less conservative figure of $55 million.
"I don't understand why there is so much hoopla about this marriage," the groom's father, Kanwar Singh Tanwar, told the Times. "All estimates of this marriage in the media are speculation." In the Indian Express, he was quoted as saying: "True, a Bell 429 helicopter was given but it was a simple wedding."

Kanwar Tanwar is a wealthy city politician from the ruling Congress party, while the bride's father is a former politician in the capital - making the arranged marriage a perfect power deal.

The media recorded each lavish detail with a mixture of shock and delight.
The Hindustan Times reported that at a pre-wedding ceremony last week 2,000 guests were each given a silver biscuit, a safari suit and $500 in cash, while at a different ritual the bride's family welcomed the groom with gifts worth $5 million.

The newly-weds, both 26, were heralded on Tuesday night by flowers and lights bedecking three kilometres of roads leading to the function, where no meat or alcohol were served in line with Hindu tradition.
However the groom's new $8 million five-seater helicopter could not be present due to flight regulations, and instead he was given its keys and a small silver replica.
Celebrations are set to continue with another reception on Thursday and a final gathering on Sunday at a five-star hotel attended by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

A report in Gulf News. More Here.