Is everything up for sale?

DHAKA, BANGLADESH: Can we sell everything? The answer seems, yes, we can sell. Well, let's think about the basic needs of human beings: food, clothing, shelter, education, and medication. How many states in the world can ensure these basic necessities for their citizens? The number is absolutely dismal except for some welfare states mainly located in the northern hemisphere of the earth. Rather than meeting these basic needs for free or reaching within the doorsteps of ordinary people, what we often see is that there are big industries that have been built to trade these basic needs. For example, we trade every single food item in the marketplace—from noodles to cookies all are available for sale; we have built luxurious shopping malls and fashion outlets everywhere to meet our sartorial needs; there are highly secured, upscale and aristocratic neighborhoods thanks to massive real estate industry; quality education from primary to tertiary is now under the reign of private institutions; obviously medicine and medication are not free as giant pharmaceuticals and private hospitals are dominating the scene. So, the point is simple: if you have money, you can afford everything you need and there are people to avail them for you in exchange for your bucks. Someone's income is someone's expenditure and vice-versa. That is how the market economy works and which is why perhaps we have put all our necessities up for sale. 

Remember: Not everything is up for sale

Is everything really up for sale? Thank again. Yes, apparently everything is up for sale. We have become so accustomed to the market economy adopted by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan and later on bolstered by Tony Blair and Bill Clinton that this economic system has penetrated into every sphere of our lives. It has ramified in all layers of our social fabric and gradually expanded its circumference. This extraordinary evolution of the market economy has turned to market society because nowadays we can trade literally everything even the more unusual kinds of stuff. People are selling their wombs touting the concepts called surrogacy, aren't they? Even selling sperm is also good business. Those who have watched the movie called Vicky Donor know that already and storyline of this movie hasn't been created out of a vacuum. Somewhere in the world, some people are doing it. What about childcare which we can outsource just by spending little money! Selling is becoming ubiquitous, right? Let's think about body organs. Aren't people selling them for handsome bucks? Yes, there are people doing it legally and unabatedly. Even your favorite car, bike, extra room in the house, empty garage, expensive toolbox, and stuff like these can be your earning source by selling the utility of these assets to interested others who are willing to buy. That is how a concept called sharing economy powered by the internet is now very popular. Nowadays, you can even hire professionals to simply cuddle you if you just need that warmth of being embraced. What about hiring someone to stand for you in long queues maybe to pay utility bills, train tickets, bus tickets, movie tickets, sports tickets etc.? Both buyers and sellers are available to do these emerging services. What about creativity, can we sell it too? Yes, we can. To commoditize our creativity and probably for sale at eye-popping prices, we have created terms like intellectual property rights, copyrights, patents and whatnot. Even for emotionally sensitive activities such as finding life partners and soul mates, we subscribe to matrimonial sites and install hot-favorite apps from app stores. So, it feels like emotional tasks are also up for sale and subscription. Think about contract marriage; the conventional way to form a family institution has also become a traded commodity. These days, the sale is an omnipresent concept. And the ability to sell is a highly sought-after, coveted skill by employers and they desperately look for it in job aspirants. 

Many countries around the world adopted the market economy for organizing productive activities and for the greater good. However, since the last couple of decades, we have moved way too much towards market society—it's a way of life in which market values intrude into every aspect of human endeavor. We have ingrained the mindset that we can sell anything or it's very much possible to put everything up for sale. Many of these undertakings have seen mentioned in the aforementioned examples. These instances are not exhaustive. There are many more examples out there. Modern warfare can be outsourced—you can hire a mercenary army to fight for you against your enemies on the battlefield. It happened during the war in Afghanistan. You can hire private security forces for your own safety. The rampant rise of private security firms is an example. Even to be a state head, to win an election, you have to buy public consensus by fair means or foul. Billions of dollars are spent in the election campaign. But why? It's to manipulate and buy our free will and democratic rights deceitfully. And we are ready to be deceived in exchange for money, aren't we? So, democratic values are also up for sale. There are even machinations in place to rig an election result and the stakeholders involved are doing this for personal gains—selling conscience in exchange for money. Money can win an election for you these days. So true! Once elected then there are different interest groups and crony lobbyists to influence policymakers. It's a complex cycle in which transactional relationship builds up to reap respective benefits. It is an unprecedented tendency to commoditize even the very unusual aspects of our societal life. The rituals performed when life ends are now commodity objects. Funeral, cremation, or burial can be done by hired professionals, and graveyard plots are for sale thanks to the innovative business idea of entrepreneurs resolving land scarcity problems in crowded busy cities. Then there is a shadow economy where all sorts of illicit activities—human trafficking, prostitution, smuggling, drugs, cyber-crime, contract cheating, heist, murder—are perpetrated for money. Even after facing an existential threat, we don't even care for the natural world and climate anymore for profiteering through multifarious commercial means. The market economy has gone too far and now emerged as a market society.

The moral consequences of drifting from having a market economy to being a market society are not good at all. We are putting our moral and civic goods for sale. The moral limits of the market are getting blurred. The distinguished professor of Harvard University Michel Sandal asks some burning questions: should we pay children to read books or to get good grades? Is it ethical to pay people for being guinea pigs in new drug testing? Is it ethical to outsource inmates to for-profit prisons? Is it ethical to sell pollution rights to industries in exchange for a mere monetary or nonmonetary penalty? Is it ethical to auction admission to prestigious universities? Is it ethical to sell citizenship to immigrants in exchange for money or investment? The answer to these questions is straightforward— these practices are not ethical at all. If we don't rein in the limit of the market and the way things are continuing, probably one day we will put ourselves for sale. Our dignity as humans will dissipate and subsequently, our very existence in society will dilute gradually. The ascendancy of being human will be questionably disputed. Before monetizing anything, we need self-reflection and the irreparable damage it may inflict. We are distinct from other creatures because we have a conscience and that very conscientiousness assists us to dominate the world. Let us not sell this invaluable virtue and relegate ourselves to a dark abysmal pit. 

N. B. This blog post is an excerpt of the paper titled Market Economy to Market Society: Our Inadvertent Transition towards an Unsettled Future, published in Social Change: A Journal for Social Development, vol. 10, no. 1, pp. 184-194.

By
Md Azzajur Rahman
Date: 05-05-2020 @07:27 am