David M. Kennedy for Democracy Journal: The Root of All... Issue #26, Fall 2012 David M. Kennedy I don’t care too much for money/For money can’t buy me love,” goes the classic Beatles lyric. Michael Sandel adds more items to the list of things that money can’t buy, conspicuously including friendship, a Nobel Prize, and baseball’s Most Valuable Player award—to which might be added self-respect, the satisfaction of work well done, the time and circumstance of one’s birth, and a parent’s pride in the good character of a child. But the burden of this provocative book is to highlight the astonishing number of things “that money can buy but arguably shouldn’t”—such as privileged access to congressional hearings, insurance policies on the lives of strangers, prison-cell upgrades, sports-stadium “skyboxes,” immigrant visas, “concierge” medical care, human organs, and even children. Sandel’s legendary course on justice has enthralled and enlightened thousands of Harvard students over the last three decades. Post a Comment
Want to Kill Your Economy? Have MBA Programs Churn out Takers Not Makers. By Rana Foroohar After the financial crisis of 2008, many people predicted that there would be a crisis of capitalism. The best and the brightest would forgo careers filled with financial ledgers and become teachers or engineers, or start small businesses. Needless to say, that didn’t happen. In fact, getting an MBA has never been a more popular career path. The number of MBAs graduating from America’s business schools has skyrocketed since the 1980s. There are many reasons for this, but one key factor is that the basic training that future business leaders in this country receive is dictated not by the needs of Main Street but by those of Wall Street. This dysfunction is reflected at both a philosophical and a practical level. Get Evonomics in your inbox Sadly, most business schools in America aren’t doing that. Meanwhile, the social, moral, and even larger macroeconomic consequences of corporate actions are largely ignored in the case studies students pore over.