What money can t buy

20 Invaluable Things Money Can’t Buy

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George Lorimer contends,

“It’s good to have money and all the things that money can buy, but it’s good, too, to check up once in a while and make sure that you haven’t lost the things money can’t buy.”

In reality, everyone likes money. It has enough power to determine happy or sad moments for some people. This happens partially because money can trigger your emotions. However, there are many invaluable things money can’t buy.

Money will allow you to experience the luxury of things like a Tesla, an estate, or first-class tickets to anywhere in the world. But, money cannot buy you everything. There are aspects of your life, yourself, relationships, and encounters that forever will be priceless.

So, what are 20 invaluable things money can’t buy?

1. Love

You must have seen this one coming because of how much it is preached throughout life.

Love is a genuine action with beautiful emotions that develops between people who know each other to an extent.

People fall in “love” for different reasons. Love is unconditional and keeps people in connection with each other.

Money may earn you attraction and attention, but love? Not at all.

2. True Friends

Everyone likes to have money because there’s almost no way to survive if we didn’t have a cent or two. And it’s only normal for people to associate themselves with people who are making efforts to make the money.

But sometimes, people are only attracted to what you have and what you can give; not who you are.

It works just like love. When your money runs low, true friends should remain.

3. Family

We all know that family consists of a father, mother, and children, so let’s consider the individual elements.

A father is only a father as a result of the relationship between him and his child. Can money buy a relationship?

The same concept applies to the mother and child and if a relationship with a father cannot be bought, then neither can one with a mother nor child be bought.

Even if it’s an extended family, you still have to have a relationship with someone who connects you to the other person. It’s not rocket science.

4. Wisdom

Someone defined wisdom as “the mother of knowledge,” and how does one acquire knowledge? He or she receives it from experience.

So, if you cannot buy experience, then you cannot buy knowledge. And if you cannot buy both, then wisdom is definitely out of your league. You have to study, meet people and just experience life to earn it.

5. Happiness

In the words of Eleanor Roosevelt,

“Happiness is not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort.”

Mrs. Roosevelt even acknowledges things money can’t buy. She emphasizes that money can’t buy happiness.

Despite all the money a person may have in the bank, he or she still may not have the happiness that we all crave and deserve. Money cannot afford happiness.

6. Health

Money can help us afford the best health care services, but health itself? Not exactly.

We’ve seen millionaires and billionaires lose their lives to a range of diseases that all their money put together could not cure.

The Dalai Lama said,

“What surprises me most is ‘man’ because he sacrifices his health to make money then he sacrifices his money to recuperate his health.”

So, besides the fact that it doesn’t buy us health, sometimes the pursuit of it takes good health away from us.

7. Long life

During birthdays, we wish people a long, prosperous and healthy life. Money would be the best gift to send to loved ones to buy these things.

But since you can’t, you wish these individuals the best life has to offer. You may also give them fun and loving experiences without money.

8. Time

The universe has been impartial enough to give us all 24 hours to do whatever we want to. But nobody, with all his or her wealth, has been able to purchase an extra hour, not even a second.

9. Respect

They say it is reciprocal. In other words, you can only get respect when you give respect and the last time we checked, there was no money for respect.

So if you can’t give something in any currency, then you can’t receive it in any currency either.

10. Character

Character is the sum of a person’s attitude. Attitude has to do with the way you behave and although money can influence a person’s character, it cannot buy a good one.

11. Confidence

Any “confidence” built on money really isn’t confidence. It’s a shade of pride and usually ends in sheer show-off. That, dear friend, is not confidence. Confidence is a quality you build with time.

12. Beauty

There are countless beauty products in the market and all of them cost money. These beauty products can only enhance beauty by covering up blemishes and some go as far as altering some features of the body.

But none has been able to change the natural beauty of anybody. If you consider surgery, then you are still altering the natural features, not changing it. You can’t buy good looks from your mother’s womb. It’s just not possible.

13. Sense of Humor

Some individuals are born with the gift to make others laugh. Most of the comedians around became wealthy as a result of their sense of humor.

The humor did not come after the money. Nobody became funny overnight because of a swell in their bank account.

14. Trust

Why do you trust people? Because they’ve proved themselves to be trustworthy by character. Their character earned them that trust.

15. Talent

Talent is a natural skill that has to be discovered and honed. Just like beauty and every other thing that comes naturally, talent cannot be purchased.

16. Purpose

People attend conferences and seminars to help them discover their purpose in life. These conferences may be free or paid but the money did not buy them the purpose.

They already had the purpose way before realizing that they needed to find it. Lots of poor people discovered their purpose and leveraged it to become rich. This goes on to illustrate that money can come as a result of finding purpose but it cannot get you the purpose.

17. Satisfaction

If there’s one thing that money can never buy, it is satisfaction. Even if money finds a way to get any of the other items on this list, it can never afford satisfaction. Money increases our desire for more money. The more the money, the more the hunger.

18. Empathy

Never have we ever heard of a man who bought the ability to empathize and never would we ever because empathy is a feeling. Feelings cannot be bought.

19. Peace

Why do people employ sophisticated security systems? Because they want to have peace when they go to bed but even with all of that, peace has never been received in exchange for money. It comes as a result of a clear conscience and a good heart.

Ironically, money may bring enemies which would end up disrupting your peace.

20. A Good Name

A proverb says “a good name is better than silver.” This is like comparing two different things: a name and silver (which could be referred to as money).

What is a “name?” It is a form of identity and how is it received? Your way of life and character helps people to receive you.

Conclusion

Overall, these things are invaluable and confidently show that money can’t buy everything.

While this is the case, money is necessary, so don’t quit your job just because it can’t buy you happiness. And do spend your money and time wisely.

Also, go out of your way to make people happy. Their money can’t provide this needed emotion. Do not lose or mismanage your health trying to get money.

16 Things Money Can’t Buy (No Matter How Rich You Are)

It’s a safe bet that most of us have had the “If I had enough money” daydream of personal fulfillment.

As a social construct, money can do wonderful things: it lets you buy movie tickets with friends; facilitates dates; allows for the purchase of ingredients to make homemade soup.

But let’s never pretend we can’t, and don’t, enjoy the company of friends without it, foster intimacy and love in its absence, or achieve perfect bliss in finding the ingredients for various types of dishes in the wild.

Despite humanity’s worldwide fixation on money, there are things no amount of it can buy.

1. Contentment

Money never buys contentment. Time and again we’ve seen the opposite action holding true: the more one possesses, the more one wants.

The need for more becomes a strange addiction to dissatisfaction, rather than the search for contentment.

2. Happiness

No matter how many material possessions, if your life lacks equilibrium and balance, money doesn’t stabilize things. If anything, it sends it spinning off in some wild, unexpected tangent.

Over and over again, we see examples of the wealthy being utterly miserable. They’re not happy in their love lives, family lives, or even their careers. So clearly, money does not buy happiness.

3. Love

In the thousands of years of human history, money successfully purchasing a sense of true love sits solidly at zero occurrences.

Love is transactional only via the deeper connections forged of trust, openness, communion, and compassion. There’s no coin on this planet that comes close to that grace.

4. Spirituality

No matter how much we tithe; no matter the alms to the poor, or vacation trips to remote temples, spirituality requires a deeper connection to the All than writing our name on a check or swiping a credit card.

Thinking money aids in that connection is an automatic go-back-to-start move in the game of life.

5. Family Harmony

What amount of money would make Uncle Joe respect Aunt Mary? Or cause dad to be less reticent to accept; mom to honestly care?

There’s always a temptation to think that if we could only give enough to this person to eliminate their stresses, some to that person, or maybe just have enough to simply put respectable distance between ourselves and the rest of the family, it would bring about the positive familial transformation we always desired.

Nope. It never works.

6. Self-Worth

Count the number of times people with expensive watches feel the need to check the time when around others. Then look at the person who thrusts their huge engagement ring in others’ faces at the slightest provocation

Common thread: they are their possessions. Their sense of self-worth is so fragile they need to bolster it with trendy, expensive, conspicuous things people can’t fail to notice. Sadly, when the things are gone, and the people are gone, so is the worth.

7. Respect

The rich blowhard crowing to fawning crowds about the greatness he’s achieved is such a cliché it should be gilt-edged and filigreed.

Respect doesn’t fit in a wallet, trust fund, inheritance, or hedge account. Respect is too grand a notion for those small things.

If anything, money often causes people to behave in ways that diminish what little respect they might have gained attempting to be decent human beings.

8. Gratitude

Generosity is great except when performed with the expectation that those receiving the boon will kneel, but there are many who have precisely that attitude: I gave, now please shower me with gratitude.

True gratitude never comes with a price tag, and, when true, is always freely given.

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9. Friends

This one could be written on a chalkboard a thousand times and still need repetition: Money doesn’t buy friends.

A wallet as a gravitational center is going to attract the nearest bits of humanoid rubble and flotsam, not the stellar bodies abounding.

Rubble and flotsam exist to take advantage of others, to build themselves up at others’ expense. That is by no stretch of the imagination anyone’s definition of a tried and true friend.

10. Forgiveness

Sometimes we mess up. Know what money can’t buy? Money can’t buy our way out of that inescapable fact of life. Not the purchase of a diamond, a bouquet, a suit, or a toy box full of Christmas gifts.

Yet who hasn’t thought, “If I could only find the right thing, I could make it all better?” Forgiveness comes from laying oneself before others, not by proxy or bauble.

11. Truth

The amount of money spent on political campaigns could likely wipe out a social ill today before lunch, yet we all know how much truth is contained in those pandering cesspools of marketing. A big budget is never an alternative to facts.

12. Compassion

Even atrocious people can throw money at charities. Yet money can’t buy a compassionate heart where there’s lack of one. It can’t make us care, empathize, or seek to solve.

At best, money can alleviate certain ills (the ills which our systems of economics themselves create), but compassion is the act of dismantling the barriers between perception and the sufferings of others, not shifting cash allotments.

13. Connection

Money can certainly guarantee a gaggle of people around you, but not a single one of that gaggle is actually with you.

Money can keep you on the go and zipping to-and-fro, but how often will you feel that you’re actually there?

A sense of connection comes from the inner life, which is free of charge, saying hello to the inner lives of others. It requires honesty, time, and an interest in the world not found on the rate of your savings account.

14. Loyalty

Loyalty is a result of respect of character, not financial transaction. Money can buy sycophants, toadies, and foot soldiers… who will all turn the moment a better offer appears from elsewhere.

15. Safety

Money might buy a weapon, which is a guarantee of danger. Money might place you in an affluent neighborhood, which is essentially a ticking timebomb. Money will never, however, provide a permanent force field protecting anyone from the crimes of humanity.

16. Purpose

We can see why the singing group Crash Test Dummies made their signature hit “Superman’s Song,” featuring this poignant refrain:

Superman never made any money
Saving the world from Solomon Grundy
And sometimes I despair
The world will never see another man like him…

Money has its uses, and is a fabulous distraction, but the things that can’t be bought tend to be the things we, as a planetary community, eternally need.

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17 Valuable Things in Life That Money Can’t Buy

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Ultimately, all anyone wants to be as happy. Everyone has a different idea of how to get there; however, there are a lot of people who believe that making more money is the key to happiness.

Even though money can make certain things easier, money cannot buy everything. Sure, money might be able to buy you a nice car or a larger house; but it’s not the secret to finding lifelong happiness. In fact, there are many positive things that money can’t buy.

So in this article, we will explore 17 valuable things that money can’t buy.

(Side note: One of the best ways to increase your happiness and life satisfaction is to plan your day, so you focus on your TOP goals. To get started, watch this free video that details the 7-minute habit for planning your day to focus on what’s important.)

What You Will Learn

17 Things Money Can’t Buy

Some of the top things that money cannot buy include:

1. Money Cannot Buy Your Home

There is a saying that money can purchase a house, but it cannot buy a home. What does this mean? It means that you can use money to purchase a building; however, that money is not necessarily going to make it feel like home. You are responsible for making your home feel like a home.

There are several ways you can do exactly that. You can spend time in your house with people who are important to you. For example, you can build stronger relationships with your family members and friends in your home. You can also create memories in your home that contribute to the “homey” feel that you desire. Think carefully about the house you purchase; however, keep in mind that money is not going to turn it into a home.

2. Money Cannot Buy True Friends

If you have money, you may be able to use it to purchase acquaintances; however, these acquaintances are not necessarily going to become your true friends. True friends are people who like you regardless of the amount of money you have. If you are willing to spend money, you may be able to convince people to spend time with you; however, these are not the people who are going to stick with you through thick and thin.

In order to develop meaningful relationships, you need to be willing to put in the time outside of spending money. This means you have to take a genuine interest in their lives and find people who are genuinely interested in your well-being as well. This is not something that money can purchase.

3. Money Cannot Create More Time

If you have money, you may be able to avoid errands, housework, and other chores; however, money is not going to be able to create more hours in the day. Therefore, you need to think carefully about how you spend your time, because you cannot create more of it out of thin air.

What can you do to make sure you spend your time wisely? It may be helpful to keep a calendar. That way, you can figure out how you are spending your time throughout the day, making sure you get the most out of every moment. Even though many may be able to open doors for you, it is never going to give you more than 24 hours in a single day.

4. Money Cannot Buy Good Health

Even though it is true that higher socioeconomic status is tied to better health outcomes, that money cannot necessarily buy good health. For example, you can certainly use money to buy the medications you need; however, you cannot use that money to buy better physical or mental health.

If you want better health, you have to be willing to put in the work. For example, you have to have the mental fortitude to eat a healthy diet. You also have to have a dedication to exercise on a daily basis. If you are willing to put in the time, you can improve your physical health and mental health. Furthermore, exercise also releases endorphins, which can make you happy.

5. Money Cannot Buy a New Passion

If you want to find something that you are truly passionate about, then you need to be willing to try new things. Money is never going to buy passion. Even though you may want to become an exceptional athlete, an exceptional musician, or a better cook, this is not something that you can simply do with money. Instead, you are only going to find your true passion by putting in the time and effort to do these things on your own.

If you really want to find your true calling, then you have to be willing to put in the time and effort. Money is only going to get you so far.

6. Money Cannot Buy Morality

It is important for you to have morals. You may think that just because you have a lot of money, you will always be right; however, this is not necessarily the case. Money is not going to be able to buy integrity. Money is not going to be able to buy class. Money is also not going to be able to buy morality. These are things that you find and earn on your own. If you really want to learn what it means to be moral, then you should surround yourself with people you want to be like. You need to spend time around these people regardless of money or circumstance. That is the only way you will figure out what you truly believe in.

7. Money Cannot Buy an Appreciation for the Little Things

You can use money to buy all the material goods in the world; however, you are never going to be able to use this money to purchase an appreciation for the little things. This is something that you are only going to find if you are grounded. If you are constantly focused on acquiring money, spending money, and purchasing things that you think will make you happy, you will never be able to appreciate the little things in life. As a result, you need to focus on why you behave a certain way, why you have surrounded yourself with the items in front of you, and why you choose to hang out with certain people. This will help you gain a greater appreciation for everything that is present in your life.

8. Money Cannot Buy Kids who are Well-Adjusted

If you have children, you may be wondering how you can make them more well-adjusted. If you have money, you may be able to open more doors for your kids. You might also be able to purchase the latest gadgets in the coolest equipment; however, money is not going to make your kids well-adjusted.

In fact, money might end up creating kids who are spoiled. If you want to avoid this issue, then you need to think carefully about how you spend your money on your children. You need to make sure they stay grounded. There is nothing wrong with buying something nice for your children from time to time; however, you also have to think about how this is going to impact your children. If you encourage your children to keep everything in perspective, you may be able to raise kids who are well-adjusted.

9. Money Cannot Buy More Knowledge

Money also cannot purchase more knowledge. You can use money to purchase books, go to school, seek a better degree, and learn from other people; however, money is never going to be able to take that knowledge and put it into your head. If you are interested in learning more about various topics, you have to be willing to put in the time and effort to do this yourself.

In addition, money cannot buy wisdom. Even though you might be able to use money to hire someone, you are never going to gather wisdom unless you go through these experiences on your own. Therefore, you should think carefully about how you spend your time, and use it to seek knowledge and wisdom. This could make you a more well-rounded person.

10. Money Cannot Buy Intimacy

If you really want to get to know your significant other, money is never going to be able to buy you intimacy. Even the money can purchase expensive gifts and fleeting experiences, it is never going to help you get to truly know your significant other. If you want to create a true feeling of intimacy, you have to get to know that person very well. You need to listen to that person and understand them, creating a relationship that goes both ways. This is something that money will never be able to purchase.

11. Money Cannot Buy Solutions

Money is never going to be able to purchase actual solutions to problems. Money is only going to be a Band-Aid. It is true that you can use money to create temporary solutions for certain things; however, these problems are only going to return in the future. In many cases, they come back bigger, badder, and bolder. As a result, if you really want to tackle the biggest problems in your life, you can only solve with time, effort, and understanding. Money is never going to be able to create this for you.

12. Money Cannot Buy Someone Else’s Appreciation

There are a lot of people who donate money to charity in an effort to feel better about themselves. They may feel like they are doing something good by giving away their money. Even though money is important in this situation, it is never truly going to buy someone else’s appreciation. If you really want someone to appreciate the work you are doing, you have to go out of your way to spend time with them. If you volunteer with local charitable organizations, you can make a significant difference in someone else’s life.

13. Money Cannot Buy Emotional Control and Steadiness

Money also cannot help you control your emotions. It is true that money can buy experiences, better healthcare, and professional assistance; however, if you really want to have emotional steadiness, this is something that comes with practice. You need to choose your experiences carefully and surround yourself with the right people. That way, you will learn more about yourself and develop better emotional control. This type of emotional control may also help you improve your relationships with your family members, friends, and colleagues. Money will never buy emotional steadiness.

14. Money Cannot Buy Inner Beauty

If you have money, you can use it to go on shopping sprees. You can purchase makeup, fancy clothes, and maybe even put the perfect look on yourself; however, even though this may create outer beauty, this is never going to create inner beauty. If you want to feel happy about yourself on the inside, you need to focus on becoming a better person. This is not something that money is ever going to be able to purchase.

15. Money Cannot Buy Love

Finally, money cannot buy love. A lot of people live their lives in order to find true love. Even though you may be able to convince someone to go on a date with you if you have a lot of nice things and plenty of money, money is never going to make someone fall in love with you. Furthermore, you cannot convince yourself to fall in love with someone else purely because of money.

If you are really interested in finding true love, then you need to spend time getting to know people. That is the only way you will develop meaningful relationships with other people that may eventually evolve into love. Think carefully about how you spend your time. Money is not everything.

16. Money Cannot Buy Loyalty

If you want to surround yourself with people who are loyal to you, you have to think carefully about how you are spending your money. For example, you may be able to use your money to purchase someone’s services. You may be able to hire a long crew, purchase a maid, or even hire a personal driver. On the other hand, you are not necessarily going to have people who are loyal to you. If you want to surround yourself with loyal people, you have to take a genuine interest in someone else’s life. Then, they may take a genuine interest in your life as well. Money is only going to get you so far.

17. Money Cannot Buy Happiness

Finally, money also cannot buy happiness. It is true that you may be able to use money to put a smile on your face from time to time. You may be able to purchase cheap thrills and distractions. You can buy nice things, go to cool places, and attend certain events. Even though these things may allow you to feel a moment or a sense of happiness, they are not going to create feelings of fulfillment. These are only things that you will find if you live life the way you truly want to live it. Even the money may be a vehicle for certain things, it is not going to get you to the final destination. You need to think carefully about how you spend your time and money if you really want to find true happiness.

Final Thoughts on Things Money Can’t Buy

Nobody is saying that money isn’t important; however, money cannot buy happiness. There are plenty of things that money can’t buy, so you have to focus your attention on more than simply money.

If you are able to adequately prioritize the things that matter most in your life, you should be able to improve your relationships with your family members and friends, alarm used to feel more fulfilled. If you would like to learn more about how to acquire happiness outside of funny, take a look at this article on 99 Daily Mantras for Happiness, Love, Positivity, and Well-Being.

What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets

A renowned political philosopher rethinks the role that markets and money should play in our society

Should we pay children to read books or to get good grades? Should we put a price on human life to decide how much pollution to allow? Is it ethical to pay people to test risky new drugs or to donate their organs? What about hiring mercenaries to fight our wars, outsourcing inmates to for-profit prisons, auctioning admission to elite universities, or selling citizenship to immigrants willing to pay?
In his New York Times bestseller What Money Can’t Buy, Michael J. Sandel takes up one of the biggest ethical questions of our time: Isn’t there something wrong with a world in which everything is for sale? If so, how can we prevent market values from reaching into spheres of life where they don’t belong? What are the moral limits of markets?
In recent decades, market values have crowded out nonmarket norms in almost every aspect of life. Without quite realizing it, Sandel argues, we have drifted from having a market economy to being a market society.
In Justice, an international bestseller, Sandel showed himself to be a master at illuminating, with clarity and verve, the hard moral questions we confront in our everyday lives. Now, in What Money Can’t Buy, he provokes a debate that’s been missing in our market-driven age: What is the proper role of markets in a democratic society, and how can we protect the moral and civic goods that markets do not honor and money cannot buy?

What Money Can’t Buy

More By Greg Forster

Thinking morally about the economy is one of the most important topics of our time. In What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets, Michael Sandel, professor of government at Harvard University, grapples with the tangible ethical issues where this question becomes most acute. He articulates important concerns in a clear and forceful way. However, he adopts a philosophical framework that limits his ability to connect morality to the economy. Even within that framework, his analyses tend to be one-sided and impressionistic. The result is a book that will no doubt gratify readers who already share Sandel’s assumptions and predispositions but probably frustrate those who don’t.

Americans increasingly feel like their economy has become a morality-free zone. We see it in everything from ethical emptiness in the financial sector to crony capitalism in both political parties, to the search for meaning through material consumption, to the increasing numbers of able-bodied people who refuse to support themselves, to comfortable upper-middle-class white kids who want working single moms to pay off their student loans. It’s clear we need to relearn how to think morally about work, money, and the economy.

Sandel offers What Money Can’t Buy as a first step toward filling this moral void. He focuses on a fairly narrow set of ethical questions: Is it ethical to sell a kidney? To reward good grades with extra allowance money? To buy a script for a wedding toast? To sell advertising space on your body via tattoos? Sandel hopes these questions will reveal the basic assumptions we make, so we can examine them carefully.

With a few exceptions, the motivating concerns that drive What Money Can’t Buy are valid and Sandel does a good job of explaining them for a lay audience. I especially appreciated Sandel’s discussion of how the nature of a thing can change when it is an object of purchase. For example, lots of people would like to be awarded a Nobel Peace Prize; some would like it so much that they’d be willing to pay millions of dollars. But if the Nobel committee actually put the prize up for sale, it would no longer be worth having. Earning it instead of buying it is the only thing that makes it valuable. Or consider the case of gift-giving. Why buy something for the other person instead of just giving cash—surely he knows better what he would want. But while giving cash may be equivalent to buying a gift, it’s not the same in other ways:

Gifts aren’t only about utility. Some gifts are expressive of relationships that engage, challenge, and reinterpret our identities. This is because friendship is about more than being useful to one another. It is also about growing in character and self-knowledge in the company of others. As Aristotle taught, friendship at its best has a formative, educative purpose. To monetize all forms of giving among friends can corrupt friendship by suffusing it with utilitarian norms. (102)

Other valuable lines of discussion include the subtle but morally important distinction between a fine and a fee (a question with lots of timely resonance), and how paying people to do things will “crowd out” other motivations.

Amoral Market?

The deepest problem with Sandel’s approach is his philosophical framework for relating the economy to other forms of social action. Sandel treats the economy as amoral by its very nature. If it’s moral, it’s not the market; if it’s a market, it’s not moral. Thus “markets” and “morality” always exist side by side but in silos, hermetically sealed from one another—or perhaps a better image would be oil and water in a jar, flowing around each other but never mixing.

As a result, the book only considers the moral negatives of the economy and the moral positives of other social forms. Sandel does not examine the other side of the ledger, where economic forces can bring morally good influence to counteract the ways in which other social forms can become dysfunctional and dehumanizing. For example, Sandel complains that selling things arbitrarily privileges those with more money and reinforces economic inequality, but he never considers how the alternative methods of distribution he champions (mostly queues or government planning) also arbitrarily privilege some over others and reinforce other forms of inequality—often in ways that are worse than the market. Government planning arbitrarily privileges the powerful and politically favored. As for queues, Sandel’s assumption that if something is random it must be fair reminds me of Two Face’s final speech in The Dark Knight.

What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets

Michael J. Sandel

What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets

Michael J. Sandel

Should we pay children to read books or to get good grades? Should we allow corporations to pay for the right to pollute the atmosphere? Is it ethical to pay people to test risky new drugs or to donate their organs? What about hiring mercenaries to fight our wars? Auctioning admission to elite universities? Selling citizenship to immigrants willing to pay? In What Money Can’t Buy, Michael J. Sandel takes on one of the biggest ethical questions of our time: Is there something wrong with a world in which everything is for sale? If so, how can we prevent market values from reaching into spheres of life where they don’t belong? What are the moral limits of markets?

I’m not saying there’s no case to be made for Sandel’s position on these questions. I’m actually on Sandel’s side on many issues. But Sandel has failed to make his case effectively because his presentation is almost always one-sided.

No Constructive Morality

Moreover, because of this framework Sandel can only offer a negative or critical moral critique; he is unable to offer a constructive morality for the economy. If you tell people markets are intrinsically amoral, as Sandel does over and over again, you implicitly give them permission to be amoral within the sphere of action you’ve labeled as “the market.” This is cleaning the cup on the outside while leaving it dirty on the inside. Like Typhoid Mary, Sandel’s efforts to heal the symptoms of the disease inadvertently spread the disease itself.

Economic action is human action, and human action is always moral. It’s not enough to create boundaries for the market; we have to orient the market toward its proper moral purpose from within. Only this can sustain ethical behavior within the market. It would also be much more effective than Sandel’s approach in maintaining the boundaries between the market and other aspects of life, because this perspective would help us deal with the problem at its source instead of just managing the symptoms.

In fact, you can’t really draw a bright, shining line between “the economy” or “the market” and other ways of distributing social goods. Consider, for example, how the institution of marriage began to fall apart after we started conceiving of it exclusively in terms of sexual union and not in terms of economic union. Marriage only works as an institution if it is simultaneously a union of sexual, economic, and all other aspects of life. The distinction between the economy and the rest of life matters, but the boundaries are always fuzzy in practice. Sandel doesn’t acknowledge this, because his philosophical framework can’t accommodate such ambiguity.

Bad Intuition

Another problem with the book is the impressionistic, subjective way in which Sandel often treats his subject matter. Sandel appeals to moral intuitions without acknowledging that other people’s intuitions may differ. For example, discussing the serious ethical issues involved in letting one person own a life insurance policy on another person, Sandel asserts that “morally speaking, there’s not much difference” between stranger-owned life insurance (a policy taken out by the person himself and then sold to another) and stranger-originated life insurance (where the other person took out the policy in the first place). I disagree; I think there’s a huge difference between selling a life insurance policy you no longer want to a person whom you choose and may have reason to trust, versus someone taking out a policy on a stranger without their knowledge. But Sandel never seriously considers this or any other alternative view.

As an indication of just how subjective and impressionistic the book is, consider that it has no conclusion. Sandel lines up a long list of ethical issues, and when he has pondered the last, the text more or less just cuts off. Sandel owed us something more than a stream of consciousness.

A more surprising omission, coming from a political philosopher, is the failure to ask when and how it’s permissible to enforce one view over another by law when intuitions differ, and who has the authority to make that call. Sandel is absolutely right that we have a big problem with granting permission to assert in our political arguments that one way of life is better than another. However, Sandel swings too far in the opposite direction by simply taking his subjective moral intuitions and recommending policy based on them. If policy flows from intuitions in this way, then either our public morality will be decided by majority vote and imposed on the minority, or else public policy will be guided by the private morality of an elite class. Either way, freedom of religion and the rule of law fly out the window, and we cease to be politically free. We need a way of reasoning together about public morality, but Sandel’s subjective methods can’t provide one.

Finally, Sandel sometimes displays an embarrassing ignorance of basic economic facts relevant to his case. The phenomenon of “concierge doctors,” which Sandel deplores, was created not by any operations of the market but by politicians manipulating Medicare reimbursement rates and a host of other factors. Also off Sandel’s radar are the low-cost, no-insurance-necessary storefront clinics sprouting up nationwide, thanks to the opportunities provided by the market, to redress the lack of access to care Sandel worries about—and which is in part caused by some of the same policy interventions Sandel favors, because they drive up the cost of insurance.

I really wanted to be able to recommend this book, even if I disagreed with its philosophical approach. Sandel is right that the debate on these issues can only do us good. If my differences with Sandel were only philosophical, I would urge people interested in this discussion to buy and read this book, but also to read others that come from a different point of view. In the end, however, Sandel’s subjective intuitionism and one-sided presentation of the issues prevents me from recommending his work.

Greg Forster (PhD, Yale University) is the director of the Oikonomia Network, an assistant professor of faith and culture at Trinity International University, and the author of numerous books and articles.