Michael Sandel, in his book What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets, argues that markets in which money transactions take place are extending beyond their ethically legitimate role in the distribution of goods and services (and provision of signals for producers and consumers) to other less acceptable transactions. Would you want people to sell their votes? Do you want to see organs auctioned on eBay (perhaps with reserves) so that the highest bidder could obtain an organ for transplant? How about children auctioned for adoption? There clearly should be limits to what you can buy if you have enough money.
While Sandel is right to worry, one can argue that the long term trend is towards more ethical institutions. The institution of slavery has been abolished, and there is increasing effort to reduce involuntary servitude. We read in history where marriages were arranged by parents to obtain control of dowries or increase the value of property holdings. Indeed, I suspect that votes are less likely to be bought and sold today than they once were.
Sandel suggests that we should have a public debate on the what money should and should not be allowed to buy. I would be more optimistic about that had the Supreme Court not decided that for the purposes of free speech, corporations are people; were we not seeing PACs using funding from people of great wealth to dominate the media with political messages.
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