“… individuals cannot learn to speak for themselves at all, much less come to an intelligent understanding of their happiness and well-being, in a world in which there are no values except those of the market. . . . the market tends to universalize itself. It does not easily coexist with institutions that operate according to principles that are antithetical to itself: schools and universities, newspapers and magazines, charities, families. Sooner or later the market tends to absorb them all. It puts an almost irresistible pressure on every activity to justify itself in the only terms it recognizes: to become a business proposition, to pay its own way, to show black ink on the bottom line. It turns news into entertainment, scholarship into professional careerism, social work into the scientific management of poverty. Inexorably it remodels every institution in its own image.”
– from Christopher Lasch, The Revolt of the Elites
“The most fateful change that unfolded during the past three decades was not an increase in greed. It was the reach of markets, and of market values, into spheres of life traditionally governed by nonmarket norms. To contend with this condition, we need to do more than inveigh against greed; we need to have a public debate about where markets belong—and where they don’t.” — What Isn’t For Sale? by Michael J. Sandel.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/04/what-isnt-for-sale/308902/
Man, oh, man, do we need that debate. For what it’s worth, I think Lasch got some important things wrong in his cultural critiques but I believe he was spot on about the corrosive influence of ‘The Market’.