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You Can’t Buy Virtue
Most people agree that there are things money shouldn’t be able to buy. Making everything a market has the potential to disrupt our virtuous instincts. Harvard philosopher Michael Sandel has written extensively on this topic, but this piece of his is an engaging explanation.
“If the supply of altruism, generosity, and civic virtue is fixed, like the supply of fossil fuels, then we should try to conserve it…But to those not steeped in economics, this way of thinking about the generous virtues is strange, even far-fetched. It ignores the possibility that our capacity for love and benevolence is not depleted with use but enlarged with practice.”
