Last time Elizabeth Anderson while considering prostitution and detailed marriage contracts made “two qualitative distinctions among goods to which the market is insensitive: those between gift values and impersonal exchange values and those between shared goods and divisible goods.” Today we start off with two more qualitative distinctions which market norms are unable to distinguish: “those between the objects of principled desire and mere tastes and those between the objects of need and of desire. These distinctions support the application of democratic political norms to the production, distribution, and enjoyment of many goods that could also be provided by the market.”
But first two we need to consider the norms of our society in regards to two values: fraternity and democratic freedom. “Citizens have fraternal relations when they agree to refrain from making claims to certain goods at the expense of those less well-off than themselves and when they view the achievement of such relations with their fellow citizens as contributing to their own good….Fraternal relations are need-regarding not want-regarding.” Public services such as health care, welfare, education fall into fraternal relations: healthy people still pay for public health care even if they don’t use it; childless people still pay for public education even if they do not benefit from it. In other words these relations are communal not exclusive. Democratic freedom of a citizen “is the freedom to participate equally with fellow citizens in deciding the laws and policies that govern them all.” “These ideals of fraternity and democratic freedom are embodied in three norms that conflict with market norms. First, citizens exercise their freedom in a democracy through voice, not just exit….Second, and ideal democracy distributes goods in accordance with public principles, not in accordance with unexamined wants….Third, the goods provide by the public are provide on a nonexclusive basis. Everyone, not just those who pay has access to them.” Anderson labels such goods as “political goods.”
Now she considers two commonly proposed market solutions that allege to make the world better: 1) dividing the commons and 2) providing cash equivalents to political goods. “both kinds of proposals fail to recognize the goods realized through democratic provision and also embody a flawed conception of freedom.”
First let us consider the privatization of public parks and public streets as dividing up the commons. One particular example she brings up is changing from a downtown market to a downtown covered mall; an Eaton Center style that takes a public street, covers and privatizes it into a mall. She also consider toll roads and private parks such as private university fields that are open to the public. Often these proposals are proposed in terms of justice and fairness: let those who use a good pay for it voluntarily instead of having to apply a coercive tax system. While this has often unfortunately been a compelling argument, Anderson first asks are the market norms of exit, exclusivity, and want regarding better than fraternal norms of voice, communality and need regarding for public goods? Her answer is almost always no. Secondly, if we were to privatize parks and streets would we lose some ideals? Her answer is most certainly yes! These spaces are depoliticized; equality between citizens is destroyed because the owner can apply the coercive power of the state to enforce property rights. Not all individuals are equal nor is their voice equal and so the value of fraternal relations is reduced or destroyed.
Second case, let us consider given people a cash equivalent value for their loss as someone divides the commons. The example Anderson uses is the voucher system to finance public schools. “the voucher system would provide each parent with a fixed sum of money to be spent on any school of the parent’s choice. Schools would be run commercially, competing for students by offering a variety of educational options to parents…this would increase schools’ efficiency through competition. And enhance the freedom of parents…” She goes through the same analysis. “As a market-based system, a voucher system would replace institutions of voice with those of exit.…This system would undermine the good of education as a reflection of reasoned ideals….Market mechanisms of exit do not respond to reasoned ideals any differently from unreflective wants….Market norms of consumer sovereignty, which deny distinctions among wants and needs and reasoned ideals, and which substitute exit for voice, are inappropriate to education.”
Anderson then considers surrogate motherhood. She is very much against contract pregnancy because it “commodifies both women’s labor and children in ways that undermine the autonomy and dignity of women and the love parents owe to children. Because the state has a legitimate interest in protecting the autonomy and dignity of women and the integrity of parental love for children, it is justified in prohibiting contract pregnancy.” Some of the norms around parental rights over children should be viewed as trusts which parents “must exercise for the sake of the children.” A trust imposes obligations on other people: “others should not attempt to compromise the integrity of parental love, or work to suppress the emotions supporting the bond between parents and their children.” “Contract pregnancy substitutes market norms for some of the norms of parental love. Most important, it requires us to change our understanding of parental rights from trusts to things more like property rights—rights of use and disposal over the things owned.” “The motives of those making a profit from commerce in goods embodied in children are more suspect than the motives of parents who are expected to love their children. The profit motive constitutes an interest less entitled to strong privacy protections than the deep and complex interests wrapped up in decisions about how to raise (as opposed to alienate) children.” In addition to alienating children there is an alienation of the mother since surrogate mothers “often follow gift norms, while the surrogate agency follows market norms.” This difference necessarily is an exploitative regime. It is a “failure to acknowledge and treat appropriately the surrogate mother’s emotional engagement with her labor….the significant forms of exploitation involved in contract pregnancy are emotional, not financial.”
“The fundamental problem with contract pregnancy is that commercial norms are inherently manipulative when they are applied to the sphere of parental love. Manipulation occurs when norms are deployed to psychologically coerce others into a position where they cannot defend their own interests or articulate their own perspective without being charged with irresponsibility ore immorality. A pregnancy contract is inherently manipulative because the form of the contract invokes commercial norms which, whether upheld by the law or by social custom only, imply that the mother should feel guilty and selfish for loving her own child….the enforcement of surrogate contracts against the will of the mother destroys one family just as surely as it creates another.”