Imagining Marketopia
Ball, Terence
WHAT IS THE proper place for the market? In the history of social and political thought, this seemingly simple question has elicited many different answers. That the answers vary so widely...
...To redescribe education in the language of the market is not to speak in a normatively neutral or innocent idiom...
...Children in the private kindergartens learn their ABCs and Marketopian values together...
...The mining and timber industries support environmental research...
...Deans and department chairs warn faculty members with reputations for being intellectually demanding to change their ways in order to attract more customers...
...And by "we" I do not mean merely academics who fear being demoted from educators to "service providers...
...Under such schemes, needless to say, the business school fares far better than the classics department...
...It has very real and problematic implications...
...THE LIBERTARIAN turn toward free markets is marked by an attempt to alter radically the very vocabulary we use in describing and appraising human action...
...WE HAVE good grounds for acting while we still have the capacity...
...Sumner University has no philosophy department, in part because there is insufficient demand, but also because the subjects of ethics and political philosophy are included in the economics curriculum and restricted to works by Robert Nozick, Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, and a few other luminaries...
...The rumors appear to be unfounded, however, as acquaintance with these thinkers would hardly advance one's career and would therefore amount to a cost without a corresponding benefit...
...the answer is: (almost) anywhere and everywhere...
...you can rent a flatterer to follow you around and praise you either in private (for fifty Rothbards per hour) or in public (a hundred per hour...
...Rates vary according to the game and other factors, for which there is a rather elaborate rate schedule...
...By way of illustration, consider what Anthony Downs does in his now-classic contribution to rational-choice theory, An Economic Theory of Democracy...
...If you're lucky, several competing companies will appear on the scene...
...This supplies special incentive to the prisoner and his or her allies in the anti-death penalty movement to raise money DISSENT / Summer 2001 n 75 IMAGINING MARKETOPIA for release or at least commutation of the death sentence...
...A radically laissez-faire economy would be like a totalitarian state, invading every other sphere, dominating every other distributive process...
...Liberate the market, they say, and let it work its magic in all spheres of life—education, energy, the environment, health care, crime and punishment, fire and police protection, transportation, and other areas as well...
...All research at Sumner and other centers of higher learning is financed by large corporations...
...From Losers you can rent a partner to play tennis or squash, one-on-one basketball, billiards, darts, and even poker, chess, and other more cerebral and sedentary games...
...And in a capitalist-consumer culture like ours, this discourse appears to have a special authority...
...The only actions punishable by law are transgressions against the person or property of another...
...What profiteth a person who gaineth his soul but loseth his livelihood...
...Under "society," for example, the entry reads: "Fictitious entity believed by collectivists to be real...
...If an intruder lurks downstairs you need only phone a private policing company to which you pay a monthly fee and a car and officer will be dispatched...
...To speak and think in its idiom seems straightforward and admirably hard-headed...
...wealthy women do the same...
...Losers' slogan is "You win, we lose—guaranteed...
...This libertarian turn is a genuinely new wrinkle in intellectual history, and is hardly confined to the academy...
...The tobacco industry supports research on smoking and health...
...Today, however, a school of writers and publicists has emerged that holds that most, if not all, politically imposed limitations on markets are both inefficient and unjust...
...After being tried in private court before a judge—juries, being slow and inefficient (and unfair to would-be jurors, who are in any event too busy with their own affairs to serve), are never used in Marketopia, even in capital cases—the wrongdoer will be incarcerated in one of the private prisons run by Burglar King, McPrison, and other franchises...
...If, however, you don't have a police-protection policy (or a pistol in your nightstand drawer), you can call a company and negotiate a price over the telephone...
...The site...
...Where everything is for sale, nothing is sacred...
...8o n DISSENT / Summer 2001...
...Heidegger once remarked with uncharacteristic clarity that we do not so much have a language as it has us...
...So, if markets are a good thing, why not let them work their magic in every sphere of social life...
...Marriage is a more serious business, as assets are involved...
...Markets in their place may produce admirable results, but markets have limitations as well as virtues— a point persuasively argued by Robert Kuttner in Everything For Sale and Thomas Frank in One Market, Under God...
...78 n DISSENT / Summer 2001 IMAGINING MARKETOPIA of society's benefits and advantages, pushed to the margins, rendered invisible (as in my utopian sketch...
...Family values flourish in Marketopia, and children soon learn that the value of being a member of a family can be considerable...
...She nods, and as he pecks her cheek, she opens her purse and says proudly with a warm maternal smile, "The best bargainer a mother ever had...
...Marketopians who cannot afford health care, education, police protection, and other of life's necessities are denied a fair (or even minimally sufficient) share of social goods...
...Some especially wealthy men "upgrade" by exchanging older wives for newer and younger models...
...Renters who tire of or wish to trade their animal companions for another species can do so...
...Indeed, this discourse is well-nigh pervasive in our culture...
...It is easier for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven...
...There is, for example, a vigorous market in human organs...
...And it is precisely because market-thinking is so central to our capitalist-consumer culture that we should be all the more acutely aware of what it misses, marginalizes, trivializes, or undermines and destroys...
...Extortion, for example, is regarded as a free-market transaction in which one person pays another for the service of remaining silent...
...The prospect of making a profit is clearly a powerful motive for many people, and the genius of markets is to harness self-interest for purposes that bring general benefits...
...My purpose here is not to ask how well these policies have worked in practice, but to try instead to expose some of the questionable features of market thinking, especially when applied to spheres of social life, traditionally regarded as off limits...
...It would transform every social good into a commodity...
...Drugs and sexual services are reasonably priced, of course, but then so are most things, because there is a market in every conceivable good and service...
...boasts that it is 'bringing capitalism and democracy closer together.' It offers to buy the absentee ballots of undecided voters and then allow organizations and individuals to bid for a block of votes from a state...
...Doubts about free-market ideology are spreading...
...For whether our society will resemble Marketopia is a matter of choice, first, of the individual choices that we make as consumers and then, more decisively, of the collective choices that we make as citizens...
...As Adam Smith famously put it, "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest...
...The mother will then say something like, "Two Rothbards...
...I mean that we as citizens have good grounds for fearing that the language of markets and consumership may be supplanting the language DISSENT / Summer 2001 n 79 IMAGINING MARKETOPIA of citizenship and the capacity for critical thinking that it requires and promotes...
...With the Marketopian's minimal state comes minimal politics...
...Professors—called SPs (short for "service providers")—are eager to teach large undergraduate courses because their salaries are determined by the number of students (called "customers"), whose "grade fees" go half to the SP and half to help maintain the institution...
...These youths can be expected to excel at Sumner University...
...asks the sign over the glass coffin...
...First, why do some (or perhaps all) Marketopian practices make us uneasy or queasy, or worse...
...So, not surprisingly, ads for policing companies emphasize the importance of being fully protected and paid up in advance...
...By age eight they are well versed in statistics and by ten most have mastered rational-choice theory...
...Typically, competing organ brokers play one patient off against the other, thereby raising the price and ensuring that the organ goes to the highest bidder...
...The main shortcoming of Marketopia is its massive and systematic violation of a fundamental sense of fairness...
...By and large, markets are a good thing—a reasonably efficient means of discerning and satisfying people's preferences, of allocating goods and resources, and rewarding the more enterprising members of society...
...We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages...
...Prisons serve not only to punish criminals but to entertain a vast television audience...
...Of late, there has been much discusDISSENT / Summer 2001 n 77 IMAGINING MARKETOPIA sion about amending the Marketopian constitution because it does not, at present, allow voters to register the intensity of their preferences at the polls...
...Chess enthusiasts pay more to play against opponents with Russian names, who have accents to match...
...Under "justice": "Noninterference in market transactions...
...A month before his or her execution, the condemned prisoner is introduced to the viewing audience, which then submits suggestions for the manner and method of execution— hanging, firing squad, disembowelment, drawing and quartering, and other even more ingenious means...
...The argument against Marketopian libertarianism is as much about decency as it is about justice...
...The news and entertainment divisions within broadcasting were merged long ago and the former made a minor part of the latter...
...The result, unsurprisingly, is not only grade inflation but a dumbing down of the curriculum and therefore, alas, of the "customers" themselves...
...This is of course an oversimplification bordering on caricature...
...Why does Marketopia strike most of us as a dystopia...
...This means that reports about floods, famines, airplane crashes, and Middle Eastern politics are not featured on the most widely watched news programs (although they are shown again and again on the Catastrophe Channel...
...New York Times, October 20, 2000, p. A23...
...The two discourses are incompatible...
...If you can't afford, or choose to forgo, fire protection, the fire company will, in the event of a fire at your house, appear with hoses, hooks, and ladders—and the fire captain will engage you in fast-paced negotiations about how much you think his company's services are now worth...
...These reasons have to do with our commitment to equality and fairness in the distribution of social goods...
...Second, what further distortions would the practices I've described introduce into our moral, political, and legal language and thus into our thinking and practices...
...Our changing language may well presage a move toward Marketopia, which we ought to view with alarm...
...Political parties and candidates are redescribed as "entrepreneurs" competing with one another for the votes of "consumers," who will "spend" their votes (and bear the "costs" of voting) for the parties and candidates that they believe will best promote their interests...
...Most television stations do not broadcast depressing programs...
...Dating services and marriage brokers abound...
...For the former, one fills out a form listing one's preferences for, say, a non-smoking, Caucasian, blonde, meat-eating jogger who is willing to consider having sex on the first date for a reasonable fee or exchange of services...
...Marketopia is not only an unjust society but an indecent one...
...For example, a mother might ask her son to "Give Mommy a kiss...
...Where value is equated with price, nothing is intrinsically valuable...
...The chemical industry supports research on the toxicity of herbicides, pesticides, and other chemicals...
...They are excluded because they lack the resources to purchase goods and services that ought to be theirs by right...
...Perhaps it's only an ancient and widespread prejudice that argues against turning every good and activity into a marketable commodity...
...Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's, lest thou not get thy pizza...
...Three," he says flatly and firmly...
...To the question, What is the market's place...
...Some Marketopians vote for candidates they regard as having the greatest entertainment value...
...Another example, from my own social sphere: at two American universities with which I have been associated in recent years, the administration (and an increasing number of faculty) argues that the university should become more "entrepreneurial," that it should expand its "customer base" and therefore its "market share" in competition with other institutions...
...But the most widely watched televised spin-off of the private prison system is the hugely popular "Who Wants to Live...
...A proposed amendment would remedy this defect by allowing voters to pay one Rothbard per vote for as many times as they care to vote.* ILACK THE WIT to extend this parable any further...
...Or, for a small additional fee, they can have their rented pets painlessly euthanized...
...76 n DISSENT / Summer 2001 IMAGINING MARKETOPIA Looking through private high school yearbooks reveals that some students are singled out for special meritorious mention as "Most Calculating" or "Shrewdest Negotiator...
...What Price Immortality...
...The Austrian saints Ludwig and Friedrich are especially revered...
...But as Edmund Burke and other conservatives remind us, ancient prejudices often have rational bases...
...Since most activities and services are privatized, there is little for government to do...
...Why not buy and sell human organs, votes, and other things not traded in markets (or rather, in non-underground markets...
...There may be alliances to be forged among these diverse groups...
...Recent experiences in California, for example, call into question the wisdom of privatizing electrical power generation and distribution...
...Other useful services are also available for a fee...
...My point in introducing it is to raise three questions...
...To which the son typically replies, "What's it worth to you...
...There is also a growing awareness in the United States and beyond of the downside of neoliberalism...
...Yet, this discourse seeps into and influences our understanding of who we are and what we as a society are about...
...Some activities considered criminal in other societies are common and entirely legal in Marketopia...
...Thus there can be, by definition, no selfless acts...
...The ensuing bidding war is fierce and frenetic...
...For ten Rothbards an hour one can rent an "acquaintance," for twenty-five a "friend," for fifty a "good friend," and for a hundred a "best friend...
...Faculty are "service providers," and students are "customers" for whose patronage departments and programs should compete...
...This is of course only a small part of a much larger trend toward the increasing marketization of moral, political, and pedagogical discourse...
...This is not merely a way of speaking but of thinking and acting, For example, those departments with the highest number of paying customers should, it is said, be rewarded accordingly, and those with lower enrollments punished, perhaps even by being eliminated altogether...
...In several instances these hastily negotiated fees have amounted to millions of Rothbards...
...Karl Marx wanted to abolish the market altogether...
...Marketopians love to be entertained...
...One of Marketopia's more thriving enterprises is RentaFriend...
...Only then can you be assured that your assailant will be apprehended...
...actions, arrangements, and/or decisions conducive to the functioning of free markets...
...TERENCE BALL teaches political theory at Arizona State University...
...The terms on which marriages are to be dissolved, upgraded, or added to (polygamy is perfectly legal) are specified in the marriage contract, which typically runs to forty or more closely printed pages and is periodically renegotiated...
...In the middle of its capital city of Nozickia lies Becker Square, which can be reached via the city's main thoroughfare, a toll road named Liberty Lane...
...Most Marketopians opt for a designation on their drivers license, saying that in the event of their death, their organs should be auctioned off...
...To these questions modern libertarians and economists of the Chicago School have a ready answer: only blind, unthinking, and irrational prejudice prevents us from making all (or at least most) human interactions into market transactions...
...There have long been rumors that some students meet secretly to read John Rawls, Karl Marx, Thomas More, and other authors excluded from the curriculum...
...What is to be the proper place of markets is not itself an economic question but a matter for political deliberation...
...One program, called "Con Cam," broadcasts videos of prisoners as they go about their daily business— making homemade knives in the prison workshop, extorting money from weaker prisoners, and buying drugs from the guards (perfectly legal of course...
...Revitalized labor unions and a growing Green movement are important allies in this struggle...
...The sale of cocaine, heroin, hashish, and other drugs is viewed in a similar light...
...I'll do this by means of a thought experiment: the construction of an imaginary society in which the market has invaded and occupied every sphere...
...Marketopian dictionaries are helpful here...
...We are each of us self-interested calculators of our own advantage, however much we might wish to hide that fact from others and even (or perhaps especially) from ourselves...
...For, whatever its status as a science, the discipline of economics has a linguistic or rhetorical dimension...
...There are very good reasons for our prejudice against, say, auctioning off human organs to the highest bidder, or making police protection available only to those who can afford to pay for it, or turning executions into televised pay-per-view entertainment...
...Honesty and candor compel us to own up to that fact and drop the self-serving pretense that we sometimes act altruistically, and even against our own interests, in hopes of helping our fellow human beings...
...A grade of "A" can be purchased for the relatively modest sum of five hundred Rothbards, a "B" for four hundred, a "C" for three hundred...
...Nor, as researchers have discovered, are there adverse effects from any of the commonly used drugs...
...The teaching of mathematics is even more impressive...
...We overturn certain prejudices at our peril...
...Their colleagues have also shown scientifically that genetically engineered crops are beneficial both for human health and the natural environment...
...Now children," the teacher intones in a cheerful voice, "what does A stand for...
...CLEARLY, THE people of Marketopia have much to be thankful for...
...Surveys are conducted to assess "customer satisfaction" with the "product" being delivered...
...Some viewers— especially members of the victim's family— are prepared to pay thousands or even millions of Rothbards to ensure the grisliest of deaths for the condemned...
...Such redescriptions are not normatively neutral inasmuch as they can supplant civic discourse, redirecting our attention and reshaping our characters and conduct...
...And so, not surprisingly, many Marketopians are religious...
...To which her eager young charges respond in unison, "Assets...
...Third, are we in important respects already living in Marketopia or at least heading in that direction...
...See also Public...
...They shake their heads in disbelief when told that there was a time when human blood and organs were freely donated by communityminded altruists—and typically ask what the words "community" and "altruist" mean, as 74 n DISSENT / Summer 2001 IMAGINING MARKETOPIA these are not in current usage (though they are in the dictionary...
...Privatization" and "deregulation" became official watchwords and defining features of public policy...
...Since the "revolutions" of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, this way of thinking has been put into (admittedly selective) practice...
...And agribusiness firms are generous in funding work on the health and environmental effects of genetically engineered fruits, vegetables, grains, and other crops...
...In Marketopia all roads are toll roads, fire and police protection is provided by private companies for a fee, according to how much protection, delivered how fast, the consumer desires or can afford...
...There are statues of and shrines to Saint Murray, Saint Milton, Saint Gary—and of course the female saints Ayn and Margaret— and other holy personages...
...The rule is, "One Rothbard, one vote...
...The marriage contract stipulates what assets each partner will bring to the marriage, which assets they are willing to share, how frequently they will engage in sex (and what fee or exchange is involved), how many children they will have (and what the wife will charge the husband for the inconvenience of pregnancy and the pain of childbirth), and so on...
...The marriage market and the marriage contract are important parts of Marketopian life...
...Pioneering research at Sumner U. has shown that— contrary to a once-popular but now discredited belief—there is no clear link between smoking and cancers of the lung, throat, and other organs...
...In a capitalist-consumer society like ours, the discourse of competition and markets seems to be normal, natural, and unexceptionable...
...If we redescribe our political actions and institutions in Downs's idiom, we must forgo the older republican language of civic virtue, public service, duties and obligations...
...Indeed, they are destitute of every good, excluded from a just share *When I first wrote this I meant it as a parody of a possible world that did not (yet) exist...
...Especially beloved is the story of Saint Gary's Sermon in the Valley, in which he preached the gospel of self-love while selling day-old loaves and fish fingers...
...James Boyd White makes a similar point...
...His books include Transforming Political Discourse, Reappraising Political Theory, and a mystery novel, Rousseau's Ghost...
...White basketball players, for example, pay premium rates to play against very tall black men who cannot jump or shoot accurately...
...And since the customers tend to be young, inexperienced, and desirous of being entertained while getting good grades, they gravitate toward courses that deliver the goods...
...A good caricature, however, not only contains a grain of truth, but highlights significant features of the object or person it depicts...
...Marketopians may be rich in material ways, but they live impoverished lives...
...Two days before the scheduled execution, a final vote is taken...
...As Gary Becker argues in The Economic Approach to Human Behavior, we not only ought to think and act as self-interested agents, but we are already acting (if not yet thinking) in precisely those ways...
...Bernard de Mandeville and Adam Smith were prepared to give markets a much • less restricted role...
...Even our ostensibly selfless actions are in actuality selfish: if we help others, that is only to help ourselves feel better...
...Do unto others before they do unto you...
...In most instances, the prisoners lose (unless of course they are wealthy enough to outbid their opponents...
...IMAGINE A not-so-distant future society called Marketopia...
...Surely it is because in this context market relations become the totality of human relations...
...That the answers vary so widely suggests that the question is not as simple as it seems...
...Walzer goes on to argue that the market's imperialist tendencies can best be tamed and checked by an active and attentive democratic citizenry, wary of the inequalities and injustices—and indecencies—wrought by the free play of market forces...
...there isn't much of a market...
...These and other scriptures constitute much of the moral instruction of the young and are a source of solace and comfort for the old...
...Protests in Seattle and elsewhere against the World Trade Organization may prove to be an opening wedge in a long and no doubt difficult struggle against the encroachment of the market mentality into non-economic spheres...
...This is market imperialism...
...Those awaiting organ transplants are prepared to pay the going price for a heart, lung, kidney, or other vital organ...
...As Michael Walzer writes in Spheres of Justice, "market relations are expansive...
...Most, however, sell their votes to the highest bidder in on-line election-year auctions...
...Vlote prices have ranged from $10 to $20 each...
...The language spoken in Marketopia bears a close resemblance to English, at least in vocabulary and spelling, though not in the meaning of many words...
...William Graham Sumner University—a private institution, as are all institutions in Marketopia—is not only "run like a business," it is a business, and a very profitable one at that...
...Elected officials hurl taunts and insults at one another, and bemused Marketopians view what passes for politics as a form of entertainment closely akin to professional wrestling— which helps explain why professional wrestlers are often elected to public office...
...In Marketopia, everything is for sale...
...Organ brokers walk the halls of the private hospitals, keeping close watch on the dying and making deals with family members whose grief is greatly offset by the prospect of profiting from the death of their loved one...
...Many Marketopians are quite bright, having been taught to read and calculate from an early age...
...For the athletically inclined, there is Losers, Ltd...
...But so are religious communities— Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Catholic, Protestant— which are becoming more vocally critical of consumerism, welfare cuts, and growing inequality...
...In important ways," he writes, "we become the language that we use," inasmuch as "the languages we speak, and the cultural practices they at once reflect and make possible, mark or form our minds by habituating them to certain forms of attention, certain ways of seeing and conceiving of oneself and of the world...
...Politics can still make strange bedfellows...
...Why do we balk at extending the sway of the market into these and many other areas...
...For example, from Sycophants, Inc...
...One of the most popular shows is "The Happy News Hour" on PBS, the Private Broadcasting Service...
...For those who prefer nonhuman companionship, Rent-a-Pet (a whollyowned subsidiary of Rent-a-Friend) provides dogs, cats, goldfish, gerbils, pot-bellied pigs, and many other animals for periods ranging from one day to the lifetime of the animal...
...The same is also true of the new and improved pesticides and herbicides...
...On an even brighter note, love and marriage flourish in Marketopia...
...This in turn ensures an even larger viewing audience and therefore increased advertising revenues...
...And it immediately answers: 43,287 Rothbards (the national currency, named for the sainted Murray), the amount raised so far by the sale of relics— items belonging to or once touched by the late economist and demigod...
...Who or what do we become, once we begin to speak the language of libertarianism and of free-market economics...
...But in the fall the New York Times reported on a now-defunct site—voteauction.comwhere voters could sell their votes to the highest bidders...
...Economics supplies a language of redescription— a set of concepts and categories with which we recast the ways we describe and justify our institutions and practices...
...THE PRIVATE prisons of Marketopia are both profitable and popular...
...B is for Bank, C is for Capital, M is for Market (of course), P is for Private property, and so on...
...Sacred scripture—found particularly in The Book of Mammon—is avidly studied, and many Marketopians can quote key scriptures from memory...
...These negotiated post-fire fees (as they are called) tend to be very high, often running into the tens or even hundreds of thousands of Rothbards...
...Large pharmaceutical firms finance the study of drug safety and effectiveness...
...Last, and certainly least, is politics and citizenship in Marketopia...
...And under "injustice" the obverse: "Interference with and/or regulation of market transactions...
...Uninsured and understandably hysterical consumers typically pay premium prices for post-intrusion police protection...
...Aristotle, and later the Church Fathers, held that the market has a greatly restricted but legitimate place in social life...
...The love of money is the root of all good" (this passage is also printed on the Rothbard...
...ALTHOUGH there are lonely people in Marketopia, they needn't remain lonely for long if they have a desire for company and the means to pay for it...
...By age six most children have mastered decimals and percentages and can calculate compound interest...
...For a modest admission fee, one can enter the square and, for a further fee, gain entry to the mausoleum containing the embalmed body of Gary Becker, national hero and saint...
...Or, if there are, they are, again by definition, irrational...
Vol. 48 • July 2001 • No. 3
