Markets with Limits: How the Commodification of Academia Derails Debate, by James Stacey Taylor. New York: Routledge, 2022. 220 pp.

M arkets with Limits is a direct response to Brennan and Jaworski’s (2015) Markets without Limits. Taylor argues that Brennan and Jaworski’s work contains serious philosophical and exegetical errors (3) and that these errors are the result of market norms unduly influencing scholarship (5–6). I think the former is true and the latter is unclear but (if we adopt best practices of academic charity) should be rejected.

Taylor argues that conflicts of interest and exegesis ought to be governed by academic norms of responsibility to one another (161–62). Furthermore, we should be open about our conflicts. Here are mine. Taylor solicited this review. Shortly after agreeing (conditioned on reading the book), I was offered a position with Brennan and Jaworski. This creates two conflicts of interest: toward Taylor (on one hand) and toward Brennan and Jaworski (on the other). I try to show charity toward all three authors.

Brennan and Jaworski’s (2015) work defends markets in a range of goods and services from criticism; they defend the moral permissibility of markets in sex work, voting, military contracting, and others under the general thesis that things that may be permissibly given “for free” may also be done (at least under some circumstances) “for money.” Taylor catalogs exegetical mistakes throughout Brennan and Jaworski’s book. Taylor argues that the principal defense Brennan and Jaworski mount ascribes a position to those critics that most of the critics do not hold. The first section of the book catalogs exegetical errors in Brennan and Jaworski’s book; the second argues that those errors have derailed the scholarship pertaining to the ethics of markets. The third and final section argues that the exegetical errors are the result of the commodification of academia itself and symptomatic of a deeper rot.

Brennan and Jaworski (2015, 12) largely reduce criticisms of markets to the “asymmetry thesis,” which holds that there are some goods that can be given for free but cannot be exchanged for money or other valuable consideration. Brennan and Jaworski hold that the asymmetry thesis is advanced by many prominent scholars, including Michael Sandel, Elizabeth Anderson, Debra Satz, and Michael Walzer.

Taylor points out that Anderson, Walzer, and Satz do not endorse the asymmetry thesis. Satz develops a range of criticisms of markets in particular goods, but Taylor notes that none of those critiques include or entail the asymmetry thesis (15–19, 80–81).

Brennan and Jaworski (2015) are also mistaken about Anderson and Walzer. Their ascription of the asymmetry thesis and semiotic objections is a misunderstanding of Anderson’s and Walzer’s theories of political and economic philosophy. But Brennan and Jaworski make a substantive philosophical mistake beyond the exegetical one.

As a reductive survey, Anderson (2000) and Walzer (1983, 6–10) hold that different sets of norms apply to different areas of social life; these sets of norms may overlap in some cases. My acts are governed by the norms of my religious and professional communities, by the legal norms of American society, and so on. Anderson and Walzer call these “spheres.” My decision to donate blood is influenced by norms of my religion and my market interest. My religion suggests that I ought to donate to contribute to social welfare; market interest suggests that I ought to donate for compensation. Two norms confer reasons for action; these norms exist in different spheres. Both apply to the same decision.

Brennan and Jaworski (2015) flatten out this analysis. Anderson (2000, 20–24) is explicit that multiple spheres obtain; her criticism of markets in surrogacy applies to certain social arrangements and is in favor of other approaches to markets (such as the compensation models therapists use).

This mistake is exegetical, but not merely lazy exegesis. This is a substantive philosophical mistake arising from trying to simplify a discussion. These sorts of mistakes are a feature of even well-conducted academic philosophy.

There is one such mistake in Taylor’s book: modality. Like the mistakes he targets, this is substantive and not the result of lazy exegesis. At various points in the book, Taylor gives modal and nonmodal articulations of the asymmetry thesis. ¹

The modal articulation (paraphrased to make the modal operator clearer) holds: for some good, it is necessarily permissible to give that good for free but impermissible to give it in exchange for money or other valuable consideration. The nonmodal articulation is identical, but with the word “necessarily” removed.

Taylor’s mistake here is substantive, not exegetical: it is a substantive problem with the asymmetry thesis; the thesis does not have a clear means of individuating goods. ² Sandel’s (2012) discussion of Nobel Prize cases, for example, depends on whether one takes Nobel Prizes necessarily to be awards. If one takes that reading of Sandel, then the asymmetry thesis may apply to Sandel, and Sandel may be subject to arguments against the asymmetry thesis (at least as applied to awards).

The modality problem also bears on semiotic objections. Taylor holds that the focus on semiotic objections is a mistake. Brennan and Jaworski (2015) interpret some critiques as holding that the presence of a market in a good “signals” to agents that exchanges of the good in accordance with market norms are permissible.

Taylor raises the concern that many critics Brennan and Jaworski (2015) purport to engage do not make semiotic objections (48–50). Satz, Anderson, and Walzer certainly do not. Sandel may be making a version of this argument, though there are other interpretations of Sandel’s critique.

Taylor is right about serious exegetic mistakes; he is right that the focus on semiotic objections created a niche of specialized onanistic publications.

Taylor’s final section argues that Brennan and Jaworski’s (2015) book is symptomatic of a bigger problem in academia. Taylor claims that academic success is responsive to market norms. Academics are incentivized to write articles that lend themselves to publication, promotion, and the receipt of grants and other financial incentives.

That Brennan and Jaworski’s (2015) book has exegetic and argumentative mistakes may be a result of prioritizing its publication and provocativeness ahead of rigor. However, it might instead be the result of ordinary philosophical mistakes. The failures in individuation of goods and modality discussed herein support this alternative explanation. The metaphysics of markets and political economy are a mess. Consider a common, but straightforward, point of confusion.

The existence of any good is contingent; no goods necessarily exist. However, some properties of goods (if an instance of the good exists) are necessary. The existence of the Nobel Prize is contingent, but Sandel holds that the Nobel Prize is necessarily an award. If the Nobel Prize exists in some possible state, then it is necessarily responsive to achievement. The existence is contingent; the property is necessary. When stated bluntly, this is clear enough, but the literature (including Brennan and Jaworski [2015] and Taylor) frequently bungles this distinction. The lack of distinction between objects and properties, their modality and contingency, and the impacts on ethics cause confusion.

Taylor’s claim that the failures in Brennan and Jaworski’s (2015) book are a result of market norms devouring academic norms is a plausible explanation of what went wrong. However, that explanation is not charitable. Mistakes in the metaphysics of markets are common.

Taylor’s claim that market norms are doing serious damage to academic credibility is true. It is true regardless of whether Brennan and Jaworski’s (2015) book is such a case. For example, some “new religious movements” scholars once credulously advanced denials that a cult perpetrated a terrorist attack, partly based on financial and professional relationships with the cult.

On March 20, 1995, there was a sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway. ³ The attack killed fourteen and injured more than one thousand. It was one of the first instances of chemical warfare by a nonstate actor; law enforcement attributed the attack to the Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo.

In the days after the attack, “new religious movements” scholars went to Japan. Those scholars believed that information on a new religious movement should come from the movement itself. Those scholars held a press conference and claimed that Aum Shinrikyo could not have perpetrated the sarin attack, based on their review of information Aum Shinrikyo provided that the cult did not have sufficiently advanced chemical labs to create sarin—except that the cult was lying. Japanese law enforcement discovered chemical labs where sarin had been manufactured and showed conclusively that Aum Shinrikyo had perpetrated the attack. The scholars were wildly, publicly wrong about crimes against humanity.

It turns out that those scholars were brought to Japan with funds from Aum Shinrikyo and that there were serious conflicts of interest in their research. This was a clear case of market norms devouring academic obligations. This is a decisive case in favor of Taylor’s thesis that market norms can devour norms of academic rigor, with devastating consequences.

Taylor’s book provides a useful survey of a range of exegetical mistakes that arise with frustrating frequently in business ethics, especially regarding the political philosophical theories of adjacent philosophers (especially Satz, Walzer, and Anderson); it also provides a useful correction regarding the current trajectory of discussions on the moral limits of markets, which have been unduly influenced by the asymmetry thesis and semiotic objections. Those interested and engaged in that discussion should read the first two sections.

Although the book does not establish that Brennan and Jaworski’s (2015) errors arise from inappropriate market influences on academia, Taylor does identify an ongoing problem with academic culture and the ways market incentives fuel research, a problem the business ethics literature (and all areas of academia) should consider with greater care. Taylor provides a range of proposals, with varying levels of feasibility; as a jumping-off point for that discussion written for a business ethics audience, the book also provides value.