Quotes from Michael J. Sandel

The descent of sport into spectacle is not unique to the age of genetic engineering. But it illustrates how performance-enhancing technologies, genetic or otherwise, can erode the part of athletic and artistic performance that celebrates natural talents and gifts.

shifting our focus from maximizing GDP to creating a labor market conducive to the dignity of work and social cohesion.

Call center technology enables companies to "score" incoming calls and to give faster service to those that come from affluent places.

developing and exercising their abilities in work that wins social esteem, sharing in a widely diffused culture of learning, and deliberating with their fellow citizens about public affairs.

How does the economist help? By promoting policies that rely, whenever possible, on self-interest rather than altruism or moral considerations, the economist saves society from squandering its scarce supply of virtue. "If we economists do [our] business well," Robertson concludes, "we can, I believe, contribute mightily to the economizing Ã¢â'¬Â¦ of that scarce resource Love," the "most precious thing in the world."49

There, but for the grace of God, or the accident of birth, or the mystery of fate, go I.

Conformity, in Mill's account, is the enemy of the best way to live.

For Aristotle, politics is about something higher. It's about learning how to live a good life.

It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of a social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.

La concepción tecnocrática de la política está ligada a una fe en los mercados; no necesariamente en un capitalismo sin límites, de laissez faire, pero sí en la idea más general de que los mecanismos de mercado son los instrumentos primordiales para conseguir el bien público.

reflect a long-term and slowly unfolding loss of a way of life for the white, less educated working class.

leaving poor whites without "the comfort of knowing that someone was worse off and more despised than they were.

there is one path to ultimate happiness—having money—that in turn comes from attending prestigious colleges.

El mayor desafío al que nos vamos a enfrentar en los próximos diez, quince o veinte años es el de retomar la senda de una conversación cívica en la que, si yo digo que esto es una silla, todos estamos de acuerdo en que es una silla. Podemos discrepar sobre si es una buena silla, sobre si deberíamos cambiarla o no, sobre si queremos moverla hacia aquí o hacia allí, pero no podemos decir que es un elefante.

by making clear what is true in any case, that those who land on top do not make it on their own but owe their good fortune to family circumstance and native gifts that are morally akin to the luck of the draw.

In short, Hegel argued that the capitalist organization of work emerging in his time could be ethically justified only on two conditions, described succinctly by Honneth: "first, it must provide a minimum wage; second, it must give all work activities a shape that reveals them to be a contribution to the common good."47

La financiación de las campañas electorales y las hordas de representantes de los lobbies dan a las grandes corporaciones y a las personas ricas poder suficiente para deformar las reglas a su favor.

Meritocratic sorting taught us that our success is our own doing, and so eroded our sense of indebtedness.

What matters for a meritocracy is that everyone has an equal chance to climb the ladder of success; it has nothing to say about how far apart the rungs on the ladder should be. The meritocratic ideal is not a remedy for inequality; it is a justification of inequality.

Taxation is not only a way of raising revenue; it is also a way of expressing a society's judgement about what counts as a valuable contribution to the common good

Depender de las grandes farmacéuticas significa pagar más por fármacos que salvan vidas.

For why do the successful owe anything to the less advantaged members of society? The answer to this question depends on recognizing that for all our striving, we are not self-made and self-sufficient. Finding ourselves in a society that prices our talents is our good fortune, not our due. A lively sense of the contingency of our lot can inspire a certain humility.

Construing populist protest as either malevolent or misdirected absolves governing elites of responsibility for creating the conditions that have eroded the dignity of work and left many feeling disrespected and disempowered. The diminished economic and cultural status of working people in recent decades is not the result of inexorable forces; it is the result of the way mainstream political parties and elites have governed.

Appearance of "incentivize" or "incentivise" in major newspapers67 1980s 48 1990s 449 2000s 6159 2010–11 5885