What Money Can Buy

June 4, 2012 in Daily Bulletin

Centives has previously mentioned Michael Sandel’s book: What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets. Thomas Friedman looked at some notable examples in the book of how “we have drifted from having a market economy to becoming a market society”

  • In 2001, Fay Weldon, a British novelist, was paid £18,000 by Bulgari to write a novel which mentioned the jewelry company at least 12 times. (It has a 3.8 star rating on Amazon.)
  • You can pay Pete Ross, a disgraced baseball player, $299 (plus shipping and handling), to send you an autographed baseball with the words “I’m sorry I bet on baseball” inscribed on it.
  • An elementary school in New Jersey sold naming rights to its gym for $100,000 to ShopRite

Read Friedman’s entire review of the book here.

Source: New York Times

Via: Marginal Revolution