A Price on Everything?: Ethics and the Widespread Application of the Money-Metric

Abstract

We inhabit a social world in which an ever-increasing array of things are assigned a cash-value. Even if they are not going to be bought and sold, many activities and objects that we would once never have considered as having a monetary component are now routinely assessed in financial terms. Thus we have studies of the monetary value of volunteer work, national parks, amateur sport, and raising children, as well as more obviously economic things. This process is most evident in cost-benefit analysis, a practice that involves a systematic attempt to calculate the financial costs and benefits of any actual or proposed course of action. And where actual market prices aren't available because the good is not, as a matter of fact, bought and sold, then 'shadow prices' are assigned to the things under examination. These are arrived at through surveys which ask respondents what they would be willing to pay to either save or obtain a thing. Using these techniques, nearly all things are given(or can potentially be given) a cash value.