Justice_ What's the Right Thing to Do_ - Michael Sandel [35]
Cannibalism between consenting adults poses the ultimate test for the libertarian principle of self-ownership and the idea of justice that follows from it. It is an extreme form of assisted suicide. Since it has nothing to do with relieving the pain of a terminally ill patient, it can be justified only on the grounds that we own our bodies and lives, and may do with them what we please. If the libertarian claim is right, banning consensual cannibalism is unjust, a violation of the right to liberty. The state may no more punish Armin Meiwes than it may tax Bill Gates and Michael Jordan to help the poor.
4. HIRED HELP / MARKETS AND MORALS
Many of our most heated debates about justice involve the role of markets: Is the free market fair? Are there some goods that money can’t buy—or shouldn’t? If so, what are these goods, and what’s wrong with buying and selling them?
The case for free markets typically rests on two claims—one about freedom, the other about welfare. The first is the libertarian case for markets. It says that letting people engage in voluntary exchanges respects their freedom; laws that interfere with the free market violate individual liberty. The second is the utilitarian argument for markets. It says that free markets promote the general welfare; when two people make a deal, both gain. As long as their deal makes them better off without hurting anyone else, it must increase overall utility.
Market skeptics question these claims. They argue that market choices are not always as free as they may seem. And they argue that certain goods and social practices are corrupted or degraded if bought and sold for money.
In this chapter, we’ll consider the morality of paying people to perform two very different kinds of work—fighting wars and bearing children. Thinking through the rights and wrongs of markets in these contested cases will help us clarify the differences among leading theories of justice.
What’s Just—Drafting Soldiers or Hiring Them?
In the early months of the U.S. Civil War, festive rallies and patriotic sentiment prompted tens of thousands of men in the Northern states to volunteer for the Union army. But with the Union defeat at Bull Run, followed by the failure the following spring of General George B. McClellan’s drive to capture Richmond, Northerners began to doubt that the conflict would end quickly. More troops had to be raised, and in July 1862, Abraham Lincoln signed the Union’s first draft law. A Confederate draft was already in place.
Conscription ran against the grain of the American individualist tradition, and the Union draft made a striking concession to that tradition: Anyone who was drafted and didn’t want to serve could hire someone else to take his place.1
Draftees seeking substitutes ran ads in newspapers, offering payments as high as $1,500, a considerable sum at the time. The Confederacy’s draft law also allowed for paid substitutes, giving rise to the slogan “rich man’s war and poor man’s fight,” a complaint that echoed in the North. In March 1863, Congress passed a new draft law that sought to address the complaint. Although it did not eliminate the right to hire a substitute, it provided that any draftee could pay the government a fee of $300 instead of serving. Although the commutation fee represented close to a year’s wages for an unskilled laborer, the provision sought to bring the price of exemption within reach of ordinary workers. Some cities and counties subsidized the fee for their draftees. And insurance societies enabled subscribers to pay a monthly premium for a policy that would cover the fee in the event of conscription.2
Though intended to offer exemption from service at a bargain rate, the commutation fee was politically more unpopular than substitution—perhaps because it seemed to put a price on human life (or the risk of death) and to give that