Kim Krawiec, who studies taboo trades from a legal perspective, thinks that people who claim that repugnant transactions undermine society should be asked to provide evidence.
Krawiec, K. (2022). Markets, repugnance, and externalities. Journal of Institutional Economics, 1-12. doi:10.1017/S1744137422000157
Abstract: This Article considers one aspect of the ongoing debate about the moral limits of markets – namely, the purported harmful effects of market transactions on particular relations, goods, services, or society at large, due to an inappropriate valuation. In other words, the argument is that some markets are ‘repugnant’ because they degrade and corrupt a variety of nonmarket values and relations, not just to the willing parties to the exchange, but to larger segments of society. This objection contains both a (frequently unacknowledged) empirical component and a moral component. This Article critiques these empirical claims on two grounds. First, market skeptics fail to provide evidence of the negative effects they hypothesize, despite widespread variation over time and across legal regimes. Second, these objections fail to account for the well-documented human tendency to fashion repugnant exchanges in a manner that reinforces – rather than undermines – deeply held values and relationships.
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"how do we, as a society, determine what is up for sale and what must be immune from market forces? Although all cultures and time periods have proclaimed some transactions too sacred for the marketplace, those boundaries vary greatly across times and cultures and are often contested at the margins (Fiske and Tetlock1997). Once-common practices such as slavery, commutation (a direct payment to the government in exchange for relief from military service), substitution (paying another for military service in one's place), and the purchase of indulgences are no longer acceptable in most societies ( Krawiec2009a; NY Times, 1864). At the same time, formerly taboo practices, such as charging interest on a loan or accepting money in exchange for the practice of law are now widespread – although, in the case of charging interest, not universally so (Rossman2014).
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"Many justifications have been offered for limits on ‘repugnant’ (Roth 2007) or ‘taboo’ ( Fiske and Tetlock1997) markets. This article considers a single, but prominent, objection – that some markets degrade and corrupt a variety of nonmarket values and relations, not just to the willing parties to the exchange, but to larger segments of society. This objection often involves concerns about the purported harmful effects of market transactions on particular relations, goods, services, or society at large due to an inappropriate valuation and has both a (frequently unacknowledged) empirical component and a moral component.
"The objection is empirical because it contends that markets in certain items and activities change the way in which society and its members perceive those items and activities or the non-market relationships through which they would otherwise be supplied. It is also a moral claim, because it rests on a contention that the change is inevitably negative – that certain modes of valuation and visions of the world are superior to others, or at least unsuitable to certain situations ( Anderson1993).
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"This Article critiques these empirical claims on two grounds. First, as noted by others, market skeptics fail to provide evidence of the negative effects they hypothesize, despite widespread variation over time and across legal regimes. Second, and more importantly, these objections fail to account for the well-documented human tendency to fashion repugnant exchanges in a manner that reinforces – rather than undermines – deeply held values and relationships. The fact that a particular transaction is deemed morally repugnant by large swathes of society does not, after all, mean that such transactions disappear, even in the face of strong legal sanctions and criminal prohibitions. But it does mean that such exchanges may be managed, obfuscated, or reframed in some way, acknowledging and reinforcing the taboo in the process.
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"to the extent that some, including Sandel (2012), have explicitly contended that ‘market creep’ has occurred without public awareness or debate, that claim is undermined by the full extent to which participants in and third-party observers of repugnant exchange have, in fact, debated, modified, and managed those exchanges over time."
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